


Cat Scratch Fever

by murderlight



Category: Bleach
Genre: Cats, Humour, Identity Porn, M/M, Shapeshifting, Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2019-06-29 04:48:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 46,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15722286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murderlight/pseuds/murderlight
Summary: It started with a liquor-fuelled night of fun and ended with Ichigo on all fours. Curious about the Shihouin family secret, Ichigo engrosses himself in a new form of training, and accidentally endears himself to Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez.The only thing is, Ichigo is living a double life, and Grimmjow has no idea the shinigami he detests is also his newfound stray friend.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The title art is by the ever-amazing [peppertea](https://twitter.com/peppertea_)!

It all started one evening in the back rooms of the Urahara shop.

Just a regular evening: most Thursdays and Fridays they all crashed out on the tatami with too much sake and laughter. Urahara and Yoruichi and Tessai and Kon and Ichigo—and sometimes, just sometimes—Grimmjow would even take a break from brooding in Hueco Mundo and join them for a while. Ichigo didn’t understand or ask about the borderline violent housemate routine he had with Urahara, other than to guess it was probably a leftover from their team-up a few years back. So, some nights he was there, but mostly he wasn’t.

It was on one of the nights he wasn’t there, a night when Ichigo had drank far too much and was thinking deep thoughts about the universe, that he found himself struck with a question he’d never thought of before.

“Hey, Yoruichi…how the hell do you turn into a cat, anyway? Is it a family technique?” Reclining back on his palms in front of the low table, he turned to frown at the woman laying spread-eagled beside him, licking spilt sake off her fingertips.

“Curious about my pussy, Ichigo?” Her smile was broadly self-satisfied. “You’re supposed to ask these things in private, you know.”

“Everyone here has seen your pussy already,” Ichigo replied. “In every sense of the word.”

“It’s true,” Urahara said agreeably, filling the tokkuri with sake again right there at the table. “Tessai-san, remember the time we walked in on her doing the nude splits in a handstand? You almost bled to death.”

“I was doing yoga,” Yoruichi said sharply. “We could have all been adults about it until Kisuke flicked pez into a place pez isn’t supposed to go.”

Tessai just shook his head sadly at the memory. “Never has a sight haunted my nightmares so persistently.”

“I’ve never seen Yoruichi-san’s bearded clam,” Kon said, occupying Ichigo’s body. He was pink in the cheeks from alcohol and whatever filth he was thinking about. “Educate me, sensei.”

“It’s not bearded, for one thing,” Ichigo said into his cup, taking a huge swallow. He absently returned Yoruichi’s swaying high five. “You’d better not give my body a hangover, Kon.”

“You don’t let me get it blind drunk, you won’t let me get it a tattoo, you won’t let me get its dick pierced—why are you denying this form the pleasures of the living world?” The complaints were said over the rim of yet another shallow dish of sake.

“Because I want to be beautiful on my wedding night. Shut the hell up.”

“I wonder where Grimmjow is this week?” Urahara wondered, apropos of nothing. With his hat discarded he looked like a slightly dishevelled hobo. His stubble was absolutely dire. “I bought four bottles of sake thinking he’d turn up. Now we’re forced to nigh poison ourselves.”

“Or we could just save it for next week,” Kon suggested, his flushed cheek pressed to the cool lacquer of the table. “Said nobody ever. Fill me up, Urahara.”

“That’s what she said,” Urahara replied cheerfully, going around the table yet again. Tessai pulled off his apron and mopped his brow with it.

Most nights there turned into that kind of mess, really. Hangovers aside though, it was fun to sit around a table with the kind of people who could move mountains, but who mostly preferred to crack disgusting jokes and dig up old embarrassing traumas. They’d all lived the kind of lives that resulted in a wealth of drinking stories. Even Tessai, who despite seeming pretty taciturn had a staggering array of sex kidou techniques. That guy lived for bondage, and once he was knee-deep in sake he’d tell everyone about it.

“All right, all right,” Kon said an hour later, squinting around the room at them. “I’m going home, but I want you all to know this is human discrimination. Your shinigami forms are too powerful to compete against.” For no reason whatsoever he tugged his t-shirt off, giving Ichigo an eyeful of his own naked chest. His workouts in the bunker were really starting to sculpt him out. “It’s really hot in here. Bye.”

“What, you’re not going to let me tweak your nipples in farewell?” Yoruichi called from the floor as he staggered away, making pinching motions with her fingertips. Kon was too drunk to appreciate the offer and lurched his way out the door. “Ah, I’ll get him next time. Ichigo, you’re staying pretty cut these days. Don’t you worry about Kon running into Orihime-chan one evening? You know, their glistening eyes meeting in the purple twilight, a stray button left undone on her dress, parted lips as soft as rose petals…” She trailed off into a throaty sound of pleasure. Ichigo rolled his eyes.

“Kon talks a good game, but he can’t even jerk off without bursting into tears and telling me about it. He’s complete shit at lying.” Ichigo didn’t add that Inoue had been hand-in-glove with Tatsuki lately, and if things went the way he knew Tatsuki was hoping, Urahara would finally lose his betting pool and give Tessai enough cash to buy a new collection of velvet ropes. “Besides, he’s more likely to be found fucking a knothole in that old tree down the road. He drank way too much.”

“I’ll pick the splinters out for you,” Yoruichi said, patting his crotch companionably. “I’ve got good vision and some really tiny knives.” Her boast was followed by a watery burp that sounded like it came from her toenails. She licked her teeth curiously. “Shit, when did I eat natto?”

Urahara leaned over the table. “You didn’t, but between the soy beans and that bloated belly full of sake you’re nursing, I’d say you made some.”

“I’m going to name him Byakuya,” Yoruichi replied, patting the swell of her stomach. “For the sheer grief it’s going to give me when this comes flying out. Ichigo, help me to my room. I’m done.” She half-sat up with a groan, tugging at the neck of her orange sweater dress. Her hair was sticking up all over. Ichigo stood with only a slight wobble and grabbed her by her shoulders, figuring he’d better not throw her over his shoulder if he wanted to keep his shihakushou clean. Together they made their way down the hall in the world’s worst approximation of a three-legged man race.

“I don’t have or want any heirs,” Yoruichi said suddenly as Ichigo tugged her into what he was pretty sure was her room. “Ichigo, there’ll be no-one to carry on my legacy.”

“You have a little brother,” he reminded her, forcing her arms onto his shoulders so he could hike her dress up. He dragged the stretchy neck of it up over the back of her head. “Besides, nobody could replace you anyway. You’re a hard-drinking, ex-captain ninja cat.”

“And I’m hot,” Yoruichi added, letting him tug the dress off over her forearms.

“And you’re hot,” he agreed, poorly folding it and then dropping it on the floor anyway. She stumbled over to her futon and face-planted into the pillow while he looked around for a glass he could fill with water. And maybe one for himself—he was feeling a bit sweaty and dry in the mouth. Great. No way was he going back to his body until Kon had recovered. A compounded hangover would probably kill him on the spot.

“Here, drink this,” Ichigo said a few moments later, hands full with a water jug and elbowing the shoji door shut behind him. Yoruichi was sitting up by then, yanking her white bra into place. There was a thoughtful frown between her brows as he passed her a clean glass of water. After she’d drained it, he took it back to refill again.

Ichigo had it half-full when she spoke, clearer and more sober than she’d sounded a few moments before.

“You’ve gotta have a clear and complete sense of the anatomy of the form you’re taking.”

“Huh?”

“What you imagine, you become.” Her smile was crooked. “Once I tell you the trick to re-shaping your spirit form, anyway. How about it, Ichigo? Do you want to learn the Shihouin secret to shapeshifting?” Her voice dropped. “Do you want...the pussy?”

Filled with sudden excitement, Ichigo tried not to react. Yes!

“I am dying for your pussy.”

“Good.” She pushed back the covers of her bed. “Get in with me Ichigo, before I vomit in my own lap. I can’t talk about this while sitting up.”

“I’m in my uniform.”

“Ichigo.”

“God, fine.” He started tugging at his sash. “You know, this would actually be less weird if we had any interest in each other.” Dumping his clothes off, he shot under the covers and yanked them up to his chest. Beside him, Yoruichi laughed a sake-scented wave of air across him in the dark.

“What, you don’t find the pez in my clunge story sexy?”

“You know—”

“Rhetorical question. Now shut up, I’m teaching.”

“Fine.”

So began one of the most incoherent, rambling lessons Ichigo had ever received, and that included the time Urahara tried to explain the nuances of eighties versus nineties western rock bands. But unlike Urahara’s lesson, this one Ichigo listened to raptly, and hoped to hell he remembered it all in the morning. If not, he’d make her tell him all over again.

* * *

 

Ichigo had kind of died more than once, so he could say with confidence that he was in more pain the next morning than he’d been either of those times. It wasn’t just the hangover, either. Trying some of the reiryoku-moulding meditation techniques Yoruichi had rattled off in her drunken haze had actually started stretching his muscles in ways that left him feeling like he’d been put over the rack.

It took him longer than he’d admit to get his uniform back on into some kind of order, mostly just tucking everything in haphazardly and leaving his kosode gaping open. But he was dressed enough to make it home, where he fully intended to shower and nap, irrespective of whether Kon was using his bed or not.

Ichigo shoved the bedroom door open and walked face-first into Grimmjow. It was an honest to goodness forward march that shoved his mouth right into the side of his neck, too, which meant he had to leave the country as soon as possible and assume a new identity. But instead of being brutalised Grimmjow only shoved him away and scratched his neck irritably. His eyes were on the dimly lit bedroom Ichigo had just staggered out of.

“Huh,” was all he grunted, putting the most likely two and two together. “Whatever polishes your sword, I guess. You seen Kisuke?”

“I’ve seen death,” Ichigo moaned, jamming his thumb into his temple. His eyelids were flinching with every pulse of his headache. “Where were you last night? I drink less when you’re here.”

“Don’t blame me for your shit choices, Kurosaki.” Sizing him up, Grimmjow frowned in disgust. “Guess I’m not getting a fight out of you today.”

“Fuck no.”

“You’re a disappointment in every fuckin’ sense of the word.”

“Good. Maybe now you’ll stop following me into the bathroom and get a real life.”

Grimmjow scowled. “Think I’m here for you? I got other shit to do.”

“So go do it then,” Ichigo said sourly, stepping around him. He didn’t see Grimmjow stick his foot out until his ankle hit it and proceeded to go down like a sack of shit. His stomach lurched dangerously as he pushed himself up on his knees. “I swear to god, Grimmjow—”

“Take it out on me when you’re not sweating old sake. You fuckin’ stink.” Shoving his hands in his pockets, Grimmjow jaunted away down the hall in search of Urahara. “Later.”

“Asshole,” Ichigo muttered, shoving himself to his feet with difficulty. His entire body was singing a note of pure pain. Heading for the door, he managed to get out into the fresh morning air without any further interruptions, leaving him with just his churning stomach and the torturous bright sunshine.

The dynamic between Grimmjow and himself had shifted a lot since their life or death battles in the old days. Those were, what, three years gone? More? Urahara’s intervention and strange pseudo-partnership with Grimmjow meant that while they still traded insults like physical blows and fought in the downstairs bunker sometimes, it was far more likely they’d just skirt each other with displeasure and go their separate ways. Ichigo couldn’t say he really liked it that way, but he supposed it was better than being skewered in the guts.

Grimmjow had never really softened up toward him like Ichigo had assumed he might. Irritable, judgemental and easily riled, once he’d realised the extent of Ichigo’s human ties to the living world he’d backed right up in disgust, declaring that he’d wait until they were both dead and on even footing before having their fated battle. Something about Ichigo never going all-out while he still had loved ones tying him down, or words to that effect. Silently Ichigo suspected Grimmjow just didn’t like the idea of ruining his mutually beneficial partnership with Urahara if he did manage to kill him. Like it was even a possibility.

The point was, they’d never gotten along, never seen eye to eye outside a fight, and Ichigo had long since given up on that ever changing. Grimmjow, it seemed, just wasn’t built for being friends with anyone.

Putting it out of his head, Ichigo decided hauling his carcass home and resting up was definitely the order of the day, but after that he was going to get straight back into the lessons Yoruichi had been giving him the night before. It was as good a hobby as any, wasn’t it? He didn’t need to be thinking about Grimmjow and his disapproving scowls. That guy couldn’t even turn up on time, let alone anything else.

Yeah.

Hell with that guy, Ichigo was going to turn into a cat.

* * *

 

Ichigo spent three days alone with his verbal tutorial ringing in his ears before he started to wonder if he’d missed something important. He’d memorised anatomy texts, he’d watched about seven hundred cat videos on YouTube in a row, he’d even cornered his father about bone structure similarities between humans and cats. He’d listened to purring audio on loop in the hopes it would help him meditate his way into a new shape.

All he ended up with was some screaming muscles and at one point, a possible hernia until he got Isshin to kidou him a quick healing. The reiryoku moulding seemed to be on point, but he was missing something. Stubbornly refusing to ask for help until he absolutely needed it, Ichigo persisted on the floor of his bedroom for hours, his legs tightly folded and eyes scrunched shut.

“You look like you’re about to shit your pants,” Kon noted idly from the bed, tossing a tennis ball up at the ceiling and catching it. He’d been almost exclusively occupying Ichigo’s body while he tried to learn the technique. “Stop straining so hard. Yoruichi doesn’t make that face when she changes. Just text her for some pointers already.”

“That’s quitting talk,” Ichigo said, not bothering to open his eyes. “I can feel my muscles and bones shifting every time I try it, so I’m doing something right. I’ve just gotta—” The familiar ding of his phone receiving an incoming message interrupted his speech. His eyes popped open. “Who is that from?”

“Yoruichi,” Kon said patiently. “She says come over.” Ichigo leaned over and grabbed the phone from him, jabbing him in the ribs until he let go.

 **[Yoruichi]:** _come over, stupid. i forgot a bunhc of stuff about visualisation. tell kon he can lick my armpit exactly once if he gives me foot rubs for hte next 12 years_

What the hell? Ichigo scrolled up slightly to the message above it.

_Ichigo needs cat tips. Related topic: I need cat teats. Do you need…cat treats?_

“Fucking hell, Kon.”

“It was worth a shot. Kinda worked, too.”

“You’re not licking her armpit with my tongue.”

“Fucking tyrant! I hope you get stuck with a barbed dick forever!”

After the shouting argument that resulted from that comment, Ichigo headed back down to the shop to complete his training. Naturally everybody was there, including Jinta and Ururu staring with pubescent rage at each other over their phones in the corner of the room. Urahara and Tessai were playing some complicated card game at the table with what looked like M&Ms for chips. Grimmjow was rubbing his zanpakutou down with an oily cloth and frowning at him contemplatively as he walked in.

“Oi, what brings—”

“Ichigo!” Yoruichi called from the hallway, completely overriding Grimmjow’s words. “Hurry up, I’m ready for you.”

“Coming,” Ichigo replied, swinging his swords down to lay beside Tessai. “Don’t lose these in the card game, yeah?”

“I’m in front by ten thousand yen and one healthy kidney.”

“Oh, cool.” Apparently Tessai didn’t fuck around with cards. Ichigo headed down the hall without another glance, though he could feel eyes following him until the door closed.

Yoruichi was serious about giving him more lessons, despite how the invitation came about. Not only did she drag him into her bedroom and slide the door shut, but she’d shucked her clothes and transformed the instant they were alone. On four legs instead of two, she licked her paw delicately and stared up at him with gleaming golden eyes.

“See how easy that was?” she asked him in her jarring old man voice. “That’s practice, and a good application of mind over matter. Your own reiryoku-based body can do the same, as it happens.”

“But I’m not just reiryoku,” Ichigo said, pulling his clothes off. “Or I mean, not just that of a shinigami. I feel like I’m tearing myself apart whenever I try the techniques you talked about.”

“Reiryoku binds all spiritual things together,” Yoruichi said. “It’s indiscriminate lifeforce. The only reason you look like you do now is because you’re certain in your belief that this form is you. The same happens when your hollow aspect has taken over in the past. Instinct, Ichigo. It governs your skin, your bones, your eyes, your strength. Active shapeshifting isn’t just visualising a form, it’s believing it, too.” Stretching hard, Yoruichi dipped her head low and arched her back. “Come feel me. Study the reiryoku under my skin as I change back and forth, but I want you to feel it in yourself, too.”

They spent hours in her room like that, hand to skin as reiryoku was guided back and forth, one form to another, until Ichigo felt like he could send it rushing under his own skin like that, too. Sweat broke on his brow as Yoruichi guided him closer, both of them tired from the endless push and pull of energy between them. She really was a dedicated teacher when she wanted to be, Ichigo thought hazily as she tugged him down to rest his face on her human shoulder for five. Punishing as hell, but dedicated.

It was about then that the shoji door slammed open, letting a gust of cold air into the darkened room.

“Dinner time,” Grimmjow barked, then did a sharp double-take. “Fuck’s sake. Guess there’s no accounting for taste.”

“Good evening, Grimmjow,” Yoruichi laughed breathlessly, her lean and entirely naked body shining with sweat. Her thighs were lifted on either side of Ichigo’s hips like city gates. “Tell Kisuke I’ll be out shortly.”

Ichigo expected the door to shut again, but Grimmjow lingered an instant in the doorway, a black silhouette surrounded by glaring white light.

“Kurosaki? You staying?”

“Hell no,” Ichigo mumbled into long purple hair. He didn’t even have the energy to move. “Shut the damn door any time, pervert.”

“Fuck you.” The door slammed with a bang. Yoruichi laughed.

“I think he likes you.”

“He’s an asshole.” Shoving himself up on noodle-arms, Ichigo rolled away and tried to recall the feeling again of reiryoku pushing under his skin like the tide. An inhale of the soul, she’d described it. An anticipating rush, a pulling in of power, and a form he could picture so clearly it felt like a second skin.

The world around Ichigo ballooned for a moment, distorting into something fishbowl-like and desaturated of colour. His skin itched all over like fire-ants had bitten him from end to end. When it settled, Yoruichi was scrambling over to him on her knees, a towel hanging off her shoulders. Her eyes were bright and excited.

“Almost! Almost, Ichigo!” Scruffing his hair with an exuberant hand, she laughed. “Sometimes this happens, though.” Fingers tugged at something attached to his head. Reaching up, he felt around the top of his head with curiosity, sifting through the strands of his hair.

“They’re adorable,” Yoruichi said, rubbing the soft tips of what felt like two enormous triangular ears growing out of the spiky mess of his hair. “Orange, just like your usual hair, but so soft. Ichigo, you’re going to make a beautiful cat.”

“What?” Ichigo said loudly, half-deaf with his partial transformation. His butt felt wiggly, too, so he patted around it until— “Oh, shit!”

An enormous, long, immensely fluffy orange tail was growing out of his tailbone, right at the place where his spine met his ass. Yoruichi grabbed it like it was a wild snake, rubbing her palms down it, hand over hand like she was climbing a never-ending rope. Her laughter was throaty with delight.

“Ichigo, you’re already so close!” She slapped his shoulder proudly, almost dislocating the joint. “As expected of the only student of mine who managed bankai in three days.” Grabbing all of his clothes, she shoved them into his lap and pointed at the door. “Go home, practice, and remember what I taught you.”

Blinking hard, Ichigo realised he wasn’t sure yet how to get rid of his extra appendages. “But—”

“I said get out, I’m hungry.”

That was how Ichigo was forced to run home under cover of darkness with a pair of cat ears and a tail, completely abandoning his swords for another day. At least Yoruichi had opened her window for him to jump out, leaving the rest of the household to think whatever filthy thoughts they wanted. Grimmjow sure knew how to read into a situation, Ichigo thought as he jumped up onto the rooftop of his own house, knocking on the window until Kon peered outside suspiciously.

“Oh!” Kon exclaimed as he slid the glass open, tweaking Ichigo’s ears the moment he landed on the bed. “I read about this on the Internet! Can I pull your tail?”

“No.”

“Can I brush it?”

“No!”

“Can I brush it for good luck while you think about turning into a cat?”

“N—okay, yeah.”

“Sweet. Wait here; I’m getting Yuzu’s good comb.”

So thus they spent another evening, thinking communal cat-related thoughts like a prayer circle for furries all across the world.

Yeah, Ichigo had surfed the Internet, too.

* * *

 

It took him another two days, but early one morning, long before the sun had even touched the horizon, Ichigo completed his full transformation in the yellow lamplight of his bedroom. He could see it: big, ginger mittens with tiger stripes of pale caramel running horizontally up his front legs, a fluffy chest of similar colouring and a tail like an enormous plume of orange-cream smoke wrapping around his body. Whiskers like white reeds spread off the curve of his narrow muzzle, sensitive and as broad as his own feline shoulders. His tongue felt like a tapering stretch of wet sandpaper in his mouth, running along teeth like pointy little knives.

Fuck. Yes.

Ichigo was a _cat._

“Kon! Kon!” he called, excited beyond all reasoning. But Kon slept like the dead, and that morning was no exception, leaving Ichigo with nobody to gloat to. He hadn’t told his family what he’d been studying for, though his father probably thought he was on the veterinarian track after the kinds of questions he’d been drilling him with. With no other option, Ichigo pushed the window crack open far enough to squeeze his small body through, deciding that surprising Yoruichi was probably the best and first way to shock and delight his peers.

Running across town as a cat was a new, slightly terrifying experience. Though he could see in the dark a lot better, his small stature meant the world looked stretched and grotesque to his rounded eyes, so used to seeing things as they usually were. His curved ears picked up sounds that felt like they were coming from right beside him, not sixty feet away. Everything smelled like a more potent version of itself; from the bakery with its fresh loaves being pulled from the oven, to the hot dumpster in the alley half a block away, reeking with all the discarded food from the restaurant beside it. Even the pavement smelled like old bubblegum and the weeds that grew from the unattended cracks between the ground and brick walls. Everything smelled like something, turning the air rich with a tapestry of everyday human life.

High, high above, Ichigo watched the sun break over the horizon with slow fingers of light. He couldn’t see colour quite like he was used to, but it still seemed like one of the most majestic sights he’d ever laid his eyes upon. It was huge and bright, and the world around him was alive with growing things and small sounds of waking up, the world breathing a massive sigh as it rose for the day.

It was also chilly as hell, so Ichigo ran for his fluffy ginger life while the light was still low, twisting through back streets and jumping over fences to get a feel for his new limbs all the way up until he reached the back entrance of the Urahara shop. The door was closed and locked, as were the windows. Should he yell for entrance? No, that’d just spoil everything.

Wandering around the side of the building, looking for an open window, he finally found one in the bathroom of all places: just a narrow sliver of room he could push his way through. His shoulders squeezed together fluidly under his fur; they weren’t fixed in bone like human shoulders, which helped him fit through tight spaces a more rigid shape couldn’t. Anatomy study actually paid off when his own instincts were still somewhat human. With a squirm and a swish of his tail he was through, padding on silent feet through the dark halls of the shop and toward Yoruichi’s room.

Pausing in the hallway, Ichigo listened for motion. Nothing. A few sounds up further that said someone was preparing for the day, but other than that he was in the clear. Pawing the door open with difficulty, then using his chin to force it open further, Ichigo squeezed through. God, he was tired, but it was all going to be worth it when—

The fucking room was empty.

Futon rolled up, bedding folded and placed in the corner, curtains open and tidily arranged. It looked like the guest room it had always been before Yoruichi moved into it. Helplessly, Ichigo felt a small swell of panicked dismay. What the hell? After all that effort? Maybe she’d just gone out for the night. People usually put futons away when they weren’t using the room, anyway. She’d be back soon.

Yoruichi would have told him if she was leaving. Wouldn’t she?

Unsure of the answer and feeling like the rug had been pulled from under him, Ichigo slowly hunkered down into a small ball in the centre of the room, tucking his paws under his chest and curling his tail tight. His eyes slowly squinted shut once, twice.

He’d just wait a while and rest.

She’d be back soon.

* * *

 

The sun was blinding and there was a dusty broom head in Ichigo’s face when his eyes opened next.

“Ugh, a stray!” Jinta grunted in disgust, pushing the bristles into his muzzle. “Get out of here! Get! Flea-bitten feral!” A few bristles pricked him on the nose so hard he yowled. Jinta yowled right back and started fencing with it: quick jabs that Ichigo could only barely dodge on his feet.

Four feet.

Cat.

Oh shit, right, Ichigo thought in a blind panic, his fur blowing out on end as he tried to duck another sweep of the broom. Yoruichi. Transformation. Jinta seemed huge and terrifying compared to his usual sullen teenager routine, furious at the sight of him in the room. Should he tell Jinta who he was? Would he believe him? Ichigo wasn’t even sure how to change back yet!

“The fuck’s all this noise?” another voice grated, just as strangely soft footsteps entered the room. “Jinta, you piece of shit, I’m gonna shove that broom up your ass if you don’t shut up.”

Ichigo looked up, up, up into a face that made his new cat bladder loosen with dread.

Grimmjow was squinting sleepily at the room with the face and bed-hair of someone who did not want to be awake at that hour. It boded terribly for Ichigo, who couldn’t spot a way out that didn’t involve shooting past the both of them. Scratching under his mask with slow, tired fingers, Grimmjow scowled down at him around Jinta’s furious explanation of why he was in the spare room bullying a stray cat.

“How’d it get in?” Grimmjow asked finally, in a small break between Jinta’s squawking. “Windows? Isn’t it your job to shut the fuckin’ windows at night? No wonder you’re pissing your pants.”

“I’m getting rid of it now!” Jinta said stubbornly, throwing the broom aside to reach for him with calloused hands. “Here, kitty.”

Mortifyingly, Ichigo’s instinct wasn’t to run but to hunch down on himself like a crumpled accordion, knowing he wouldn’t make it around them. He still hissed as best he could though, and when hands came too close he struck out with claws that felt like tiny little translucent daggers.

“Ow!” Jinta yelped, pulling his hand back. It only tore his skin deeper as Ichigo’s claws dragged clear. Take that, you little shit, he thought fiercely as he raced for the door in a blur of ginger fur. “You little fuck!”

A hand closed around his tail and pulled so hard Ichigo saw brilliant silver stars of pain. His howl telegraphed every bit of that sensation for a long, agonising second—until a large hand caught him under the midsection and lifted his body. The hand on his tail vanished at the same time a different yelp of pain hit the ceiling in surprise.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Grimmjow grated, kicking Jinta and tucking Ichigo under his arm like a loaf of bread. “You little sadistic son of a bitch. Go fuckin’ set an anthill on fire.”

“But it’s just—”

“Get _out."_

“You don’t even live here!” Jinta bellowed as he finally listened to his survival instincts and ran out of the room. The broom stayed askew on the tatami.

Too surprised to panic, Ichigo hung over the large hand bracing his undercarriage like he weighed nothing at all. He guessed that to Grimmjow, he probably didn’t. When he struggled a little though, Ichigo found that the hand was only holding him up, not holding him captive. After some wiggling he hit the floor with a thump and whipped around to stare up at Grimmjow, so overwrought by everything he was actually panting a little. His tiny plum-sized heart was hammering in his chest. How embarrassing. It was for that reason alone that he didn’t scratch out when Grimmjow knelt down, all half-zipped black jumpsuit and limp blue hair hanging in his eyes. He really did look like he’d only just opened his eyes for the day.

“Calm down,” Grimmjow said on a yawn. “Shitty cat, I’m not gonna hurt you. Can’t you smell it?”

Ichigo didn’t know what he meant. He watched Grimmjow reach out with a clenched fist, presenting his scraped knuckles for inspection. Cautiously, carefully, Ichigo sniffed the skin hovering in front of his nose.

It didn’t smell like any secret intention. Just smelled like faint soap, and maybe old shampoo from scratching his scalp. Some kind of sweat-dirt-oil smell lay under that, but Ichigo didn’t know what the hell any of it was supposed to mean. Grimmjow just smelled like skin, and warmth radiated from his hand. The blue eyes that studied him had lost some of their tired squint in those moments; they were suddenly contemplative. Maybe even a little uncertain.

“Guess you don’t recognise what I am. Wrong shape.” Tipping his head a little, Grimmjow unfurled a finger until it pointed right at Ichigo’s nose. “Got a home?”

What was he supposed to do, answer? Ichigo felt himself shrink away as the silence stretched. Grimmjow wasn’t acting like himself. He was supposed to punt him into a wall or something, not sit there and talk nonsense about shapes. Staring hard at the finger in front of him, hoping it wasn’t about to generate a cero that’d blow him into the next life, Ichigo nodded his face forward and scratched the base of his whiskers against the bony fingertip. It felt pretty good; like he was getting rid of an itch he didn’t know he had. It felt like when he ran his hair in its opposite direction after a long day. When Grimmjow didn’t move he tried it on the other side of his face as well: yeah, just as good.

Ichigo was so caught up in rubbing his face that he forgot about Grimmjow’s other hand until it covered the top of his head, warm and careful. Then it stroked away, all down the long length of his shoulders and back, even lightly circling his sore tail and pulling the plume of it through the ring his fingers made. Then it came back for another pass.

It was probably all kinds of wrong to be enjoying it, but Ichigo had never experienced anything like it. An entire hand that was big enough to touch half his body, all the way down. A big, warm, sword-roughened hand with long fingers and a light touch.

Grimmjow’s hand, as gentle as falling feathers.

Weird.

Ichigo shut his eyes and pushed his face into the waiting palm that had opened in front of him.

“Some stray,” Grimmjow said with a hint of amusement. “C’mon, I’ll get you some food. Big fluffy bastard like you could probably use some meat and eggs.”

Forgetting he should play dumb, Ichigo almost followed his command. Instead, at the last moment, he licked his paw the way he’d seen Yoruichi do and pulled it over one of his ears. It caused Grimmjow to try to grab him again, only this time Ichigo gave into his instinct and bit him hard in the soft skin between his thumb and forefinger.

“You _fucker.”_

Instead of yelling or grabbing him by his scruff, Grimmjow broke into a savagely pleased smile, tugging his hand gently away in experimental force. Ichigo snarled around it and pulled back, clamping his small jaw down and trying to grab his entire wrist with his front paws. With his hind legs, he kicked in repeated, digging strokes that did absolutely nothing to Grimmjow’s hierro.

Grimmjow actually laughed. Not a violent, terrible, I-want-to-feed-you-your-father’s-intestines kind of laugh, either. He laughed like he was happy about something. About being bitten? Ichigo was currently the size of a watermelon. There was no good fight coming his way. Finally, reluctantly, Ichigo relaxed his jaw and was rewarded by a brisk, pleasurable kind of rub of the fur around his ears.

Ooh.

“Cmon, food,” Grimmjow said, unfolding to his full height. “Then let’s see if I can’t train you to piss on Jinta’s bed.” He rubbed his fingertips together in a scratchy sort of sound that had Ichigo trotting after him before he could even tell himself to be a fierce, feral independent cat. Besides, food sounded pretty good. Also, he had a leaf stuck in the fur under his belly, and only something with opposable thumbs was going to be able to get it off.

Darting after Grimmjow to follow the scent of frying eggs, Ichigo decided that maybe the visit wouldn’t be a total bust after all.

A couple of hours couldn’t hurt, surely.

Just a couple of hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yoruichi and ichigo being weirdly intimate platonic cat bros at grimmjow's grumpy expense, for your consideration
> 
> also: [a general idea of fluffy boi ichigo's appearance](https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/portrait-of-ginger-maine-coon-cat-isolated-on-black-background-sergey-taran.jpg), bc he absolutely must be a majestic maine coon
> 
> ~~happy birthday trevoooooooooo~~


	2. Chapter 2

Ichigo had never had a pet growing up.

Well, that wasn’t completely true: they’d had a small goldfish named Fishflake when Ichigo was around seven or so, which he’d never paid much attention to until it somersaulted out of its tank one day and hit the floorboards with a slap. Isshin, in the process of carrying juice to the breakfast table, had stepped on poor Fishflake, who had the slick density of a wet bar of soap at the time. The result had been the stuff of nightmares. Isshin, covered in juice and with dead fish stuck between his toes, screaming about his very definitely broken ankle while his mother had tried to hush the babies, who were howling at the sudden noise like someone was killing them.

Fishflake had been a cautionary tale for them all: no pets that Isshin might accidentally step on and brutally murder. Which ruled a lot of them out, given that their father had massive feet and absolutely no situational awareness. Ichigo never figured he was missing out on anything by not having one. But that lack of experience was probably why his mind was currently being blown to pieces. Just, all up the wall really. He couldn’t believe his luck.

People liked cats.

A _lot._

Sure, Ichigo had seen Yoruichi being treated like the queen of the castle before at the shop, but he’d put it down to her being Yoruichi. Not a cat, who also happened to be the Shihouin heiress and kind of a cool person all round. But there he was, prowling around the kitchen and dining area while the patchwork family were being served breakfast, absolutely lapping up the attention.

The introduction had been the strangest part. Trotting after Grimmjow into the room most used for their drinking sessions, he was surprised to see the low table moved into the other room instead, closest to the kitchen. It was laden with delicious-smelling food like fish, hot rice, miso and omelettes arranged in small bowls around each serving place. It seemed like they were into a traditional breakfast. Tessai was bringing the tea to the table when he spotted Ichigo and almost dropped the entire tray. Looming like a terrifying, tea-toting goliath in glasses, Tessai stared down at him from a height of what seemed like thirty feet.

“Hmm.”

“Oh, wow,” Ururu breathed, shifting on her zabuton to get a better look at him. “She’s huge!”

She? Ichigo felt a surge of indignation he could do exactly nothing about. It was just Ururu and Tessai so far, since hopefully Jinta had scuttled off to think about his life choices and the repercussions of grabbing cats by the tail. Or anywhere, really.

“Found a cat,” Grimmjow said unnecessarily, ditching him in the centre of the room in favour of grabbing a rolled-up piece of what looked like project paper and a small piece of…something metal. It had trailing wires coming out of the bottom of it that were connected to another, smaller chunk of darkened metal. It looked like a Rubik’s cube with a tail. Grimmjow took the both of them to the corner of the room and sat down with one leg tucked toward him, looking cranky and tired. Ichigo watched with naked curiosity as he unrolled the paper and smoothed it down on the floor. He pinned one corner with his bare foot and the other with a pen that had been tucked inside the scroll.

What the hell was he doing? What was the metal thing?

Ichigo wondered if it would be cat-like to follow him over to the corner of the room, or if it would be considered strange if he ignored the smell of hot food he might be able to coax someone into sharing with him. Damn it, he didn’t actually know much about cats outside of YouTube videos, other than it was generally assumed they were crafty and kind of evil.

Channelling his inner Yoruichi, Ichigo reluctantly turned toward the table, where Ururu was clicking her tongue at him and gesturing to herself while Tessai’s back was turned. She was swapping food over in her bowls at the speed of light. By the time Ichigo reached her, she’d used her chopsticks to flake up some of the salmon they were eating, packing some steaming yellow omelette on top of it. The small bowl was deposited beside her on the floor so that her body could shield the sight of it from Tessai.

“Here you go, girl,” Ururu whispered, scratching his fluffy cheeks kindly. Ichigo forgave her the blatant misgendering in favour of pushing his face into the bowl and figuring out just what this whole eating as a cat thing was about.

Eating was hard, Ichigo soon realised. The bowl was small and deep, so he had to push his entire muzzle down into the hot food to get a proper bite of the fish and egg. He was pretty sure he’d have some in his eyebrows, or whatever passed for eyebrows, by the time he was finished. The food was good though—real good, in fact. Was there anything Tessai was bad at?

He was licking the remains from the bowl and lashing his jowls with his long pink tongue when Tessai returned with what smelled like some eye-watering orange slices to place on the table. Their eyes met. Well, eyes met the flash of glasses.

“Isn’t she pretty?” Ururu said, running her hand down Ichigo’s back. Tessai put the plate down on the table just as Jinta and Urahara wandered in, the latter commenting on the delicious smell of breakfast. “Maybe we should keep her.”

Short of turning around and flashing his furry cat balls to a teenage girl, Ichigo had no idea how to convince Ururu he wasn’t female. But on the other hand, who cared? She was feeding and petting him with enthusiasm and—wait, was that creepy? Should he be letting her do that, considering he wasn’t really a cat? Was he being a pervert by accident? Hell, his butthole was almost permanently on display.

Deciding to depart from her and make his way around to between Tessai and Urahara, because fuck Jinta, Ichigo sniffed Tessai’s apron for interesting smells and decided he mostly held a weird funk of old man soap and faint fish and miso from the preparation of breakfast. Also what he could only describe as hair grooming oil or wax, which probably helped him keep his cornrows looking so orderly. Tessai was a well-groomed man who took pride in all his shit being done properly, it seemed. As he stared down at Ichigo, maybe he saw a kindred spirit of some sort. His enormous hand briefly clasped Ichigo’s entire skull in silent approval.

“This cat is male,” Urahara noted suddenly, pointing at Ichigo’s rear end with his chopsticks. “Grimmjow, you can’t mate with this. Why did you bring it inside?”

“I didn’t,” Grimmjow said shortly, ignoring the jibe. Settling into his own place at the table, Jinta went rigid. “Yoruichi left through the window again. This fatass smelled breakfast and jumped in, I guess.”

Fatass? He was fluffy, goddamn it. Ichigo unforgivingly watched Jinta’s expression flicker through surprise and grudging relief that Grimmjow hadn’t ratted him out. Who knew he had that kind of mercy in him?

“Perhaps Yoruichi-san would like a boyfriend when she gets back,” Ururu ventured, unbothered by the news he wasn’t female. “He’s handsome, and very orange.” From the back of the room Grimmjow made an extremely rude noise of displeasure. Tessai was back to petting him again one-handed, eating with his other. Urahara was giving his haunches an exploratory pat, making interested noises when he didn’t kick. Right, cats and their back legs! He should do something cat-like!

Cracking his sharp-toothed jaws, Ichigo whipped around and hissed just in time for Urahara to openly poke one of his furry testicles.

Whatever Ichigo lacked in book knowledge when it came to felines, he made up for in sheer offended dignity. Launching himself at Urahara with a yowl of violent displeasure, he bit the laughing shopkeeper on the forearm and laid into him with eight available front claws and both back feet. Urahara just lifted his arm—and Ichigo with it, curled around the limb like a furry orange bear trap. Touching his balls! His _balls!_

“He’s a little aggressive,” Urahara said pleasantly, hardly wincing as Ichigo’s teeth popped through the final layer of skin and into real meat. “I’d suggest we name him Grimmjow, but we already have a surly cat by that name.”

Jinta groaned. “We’re not keeping that thing. Look at it! It’ll sit on my face while I sleep and suffocate me.”

“Probably the only thing that’ll ever sit on your face,” Ururu muttered into her miso, utterly unheard by the rest of the table.

Ichigo, newly keen of ear and completely shocked, fell off Urahara’s arm and landed on his back with a thud. He’d always thought Ururu was a sweet girl who’d never had an impure thought in her entire life. Was this Yoruichi’s doing? Then again, she was sixteen. Sixteen was a weird age. He laid there for a moment in startled repose, which was just long enough for Urahara to fish around in his belly fur and pull out the crunchy leaf that had been stuck there.

“Well, what’s one more dead cat begging for food scraps?” Urahara said almost wistfully, lifting the leaf to examine it. “And make no mistake, this cat is indeed a spirit. I doubt it came here for food, no matter how much black-market reishi Tessai expertly cooks into his meals. Perhaps it simply sought out kindred spirits.”

“I’m an arrancar,” Grimmjow said sourly, leaning over his paper to point something out to himself. He didn’t look up. “Not a cat.”

“An arrancar with a fondness for bad-tempered orange things,” Tessai said, straightening his glasses like he’d just laid down the sickest burn of the last decade. “Perhaps Orenji-kun would be a suitable name?”

“Sounds like Renji,” Jinta said flatly. “The less I have to think about that loafer, the better. What about Warlord the Death Dealer?”

“He’s too fluffy for that,” Ururu dismissed, reaching for the fruit. Despite himself, Ichigo deflated a little. “He’s more like a king than a warlord, with his majestic mane of fur.”

Ooh, now they were talking.

“How about we just call him King?” Urahara said brightly, reaching for his bowl of fish and breaking off a small, crispy-skinned edge of his salmon with his chopstick. He blew on it for a moment and held it out to Ichigo with a dignified seated bow. Ichigo flipped back up to his feet and snagged the juicy morsel of warm fish in one lunging movement. Fed right off the chopsticks! Like a person!

“He’s so regal,” Ururu said. “I definitely vote for King.”

“Hmm,” Tessai said, but it was sort of an agreeable sound. “Grimmjow? What do you think?”

“Huh? Call it whatever you want,” Grimmjow said, barely listening as he turned the metal this way and that in his hands. “Like I give a shit.”

Ichigo’s curiosity couldn’t take it anymore. What the hell was more interesting than him?! He was a fucking cat! And Grimmjow had been interested enough half an hour ago to save him and give him some really, just, damn good pets all down his back, but whatever that metal thing was with the paper was taking up all his attention. Circling around Urahara, ignoring the opportunistic stroke down his back and along his tail as he passed, Ichigo stalked over to Grimmjow’s corner of the room with absolutely no cat-like pretences.

“Aw, he wants to make friends!” Ururu said around a slice of orange. “I guess it’s true what they say about cats: they always gravitate toward the one who wants them least.”

“I don’t want it,” Jinta pointed out in between shovelling mouthfuls of rice. “It’s not coming near me.”

“That’s because you haven’t showered since yesterday morning.”

“Jinta,” Tessai said with deep disappointment. Jinta froze mid-chew. Ichigo ignored them both.

Grimmjow barely even looked up from the paper, which Ichigo quickly realised was a blueprint of some sort. It looked a little like the same cube that he was holding onto, except without the trailing wires. Had he built that? From the way he was turning it over in his hands, Ichigo would guess he hadn’t. On the blueprint, notes had been made in the borders in a neat, slightly spiky hand.

_Red wire connects to side port. Fuck is green wire for?_

_Basic configuration is same as last one._

~~_Is this one fucked too?_ ~~

Pretending to sniff the corner of the paper as a veil for reading the notes, Ichigo felt a sudden stab of unexpected pique as he realised he had no idea what any of that stuff meant. Or what it was for. He’d always thought that when Grimmjow talked about having things to do it had been about using Urahara’s training facility, or just a smokescreen to get away from him. But he was doing…things. Studying blueprints?

Looking up at Grimmjow, studying his sleepy scowl and the frustrated crease in his brow, Ichigo wondered what else he didn’t know. Sure, Grimmjow didn’t like him and they traded insults and stupid fights in the hallway of Urahara’s sometimes, but Ichigo had honestly thought he had him mostly figured out as a bad-tempered but somewhat decent arrancar who did his level best to avoid being in Hueco Mundo. So what the hell was this?

He didn’t know. He honestly didn’t know, so Ichigo sat back on his haunches and chirped a small sound he hoped wasn’t too intelligent or human. It felt like he had two different ways of making sound: he knew he could speak since he’d yelled at Kon, but there was also a full array of strangeness in the depths of his throat. Maybe outwardly becoming a cat didn’t fully mean he lost all his human traits. It seemed to do the trick when Grimmjow’s eyes flicked to him and narrowed slightly.

“What? Food’s over there with the moron brigade.”

Ichigo just waited, tail swishing gently across the tatami. When Grimmjow frowned and went back to his work, Ichigo took the bold step of butting his head against the bent knee closest to him. Nothing. He was completely ignored beyond an absent brush to get a few strands of ginger fur off his black pants. Irritation prickled his skin at the lack of attention. Was it a cat instinct? Everything sure was feeling different that morning, and Ichigo definitely wasn’t acting like himself if he was seeking out Grimmjow on purpose.

“Pet him a little,” Ururu suggested, sounding put out by her own lack of attention. “King obviously wants you to.” Blinking, Grimmjow’s face cleared a little.

“King?” he repeated, blue eyes glaring down at him. “You’re naming him that?” Ichigo glared right back until he blinked. “Huh. Whatever works.” Finally reaching out, Grimmjow settled his hand on the top of Ichigo’s head in a single firm pat. It felt nothing like the long stroke from before. This was perfunctory; a show for the audience. He was making it look like he didn’t want to touch Ichigo at all, which was lies and bullshit. He knew it was. Grimmjow _liked_  him, damn it.

Completely unsatisfied with the interaction, Ichigo gave him his best look of disgust and walked away with his tail held high. Yeah, he thought with grim justice, get a good look at the asshole and balls of disapproval, Grimmjow. He trotted straight over to Urahara and crawled into his lap, feeling eyes follow him the entire way.

“I’ve been blessed!” Urahara exclaimed, relaxing out of his careful posture to cross his legs into a nest shape. Blatantly nuzzling into the hand he was presented with, Ichigo rubbed himself all over it—even stood on his hind legs a moment to shove his head in the warm nook under Urahara’s chin. “Everyone, I want you to witness character growth in action. Two minutes ago this cat tried to kill me. Now I think it wants to seduce me.”

“Gay,” Jinta announced. “Gay and illegal and I’m going to my room.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Urahara crooned, rubbing his cheek against Ichigo’s. “And forget about Grimmjow; he possesses all the affection and gentleness of a…well, a hollow.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Grimmjow said flatly, but he was scowling over at their performance, which told Ichigo that the haunting 2am realisation that he’d practically rubbed one out on Urahara to piss Grimmjow off was all going to be worth it.

Nobody ignored Kurosaki Ichigo when he was a good-looking cat.

Nobody.

* * *

 

After that weird morning, Ichigo had a small nap in a beam of sunlight near the kitchen, because being petty and vengeful was apparently exhausting work. He kept his distance from Grimmjow entirely and was ignored as a result. In fact, as they all went about their morning routine, everyone sort of ignored him. It left him with an interesting opportunity to explore the house in the way that only an inquisitive cat could.

As many times as he’d been to Urahara’s over the years, whether it was to recover, train or drink, he’d never gone upstairs or inspected everyone’s bedrooms. Two of them were downstairs behind the shop, next to the living room and kitchen area. One was Yoruichi’s, and he assumed the other one belonged to Grimmjow when he stayed. There was a small bathroom at the end of the hall, which was where he’d made his entrance. The staircase was beside the back door, slightly warped with age, and the room to the bunker was opposite it. Everything smelled a little dusty, but mostly lived-in with a hundred different scents of daily life. Soap and dirt, sweat and food, deodorant and pencils and candy all blended together into some kind of cocktail that interested his nose rather than repulsed it.

There wasn’t anything secret and mysterious upstairs, to his disappointment. A few more bedrooms, the bathroom and a small study-like room lined with old scrolls that smelled like Tessai. A kidou training room? Maybe he should ask for lessons sometime.

Ichigo was sniffing around in the bathroom and preparing to leave when he saw it.

‘JINTA’S MANLY SHAMPOO’ was written on a piece of masking tape, neatly obscuring a label that Ichigo knew extremely well because it was the same stuff Yuzu used. Peach scented silky soft shit, if he recalled correctly. Jinta’s weird crush on his sister was kind of creepy if he was using the same shampoo on purpose. Looking at the shampoo with its obvious label and obnoxious writing, he had a sudden idea.

Turning to the door, Ichigo launched himself at it like a bowling ball, slamming it shut with enough force that it latched properly.

Now or never, he told himself, and tried to think extremely human thoughts as hard as he could—and more importantly, as fast as he could. There were five people in the house, and he had to get in and out before anyone found him.

The rush of his body changing form was dizzying. Light obscured his vision for a moment as it gathered around his limbs, turning crooked orange to long, smooth lengths of naked skin. Mostly, anyway; in his haste he’d botched it again and couldn’t get rid of the tail and ears. Flipping the latch on the door, Ichigo hesitated in his plan just long enough to look at himself in the mirror.

The tail swished and twitched just like it did in his cat form. And it was big; a long plume of soft fur that started at the top of his ass and ended somewhere near the back of his knees. But it was the ears that freaked him out. They were fully mobile, swivelling and flicking almost independently of his own thoughts. Two soft orange triangles the same colour as his hair, just pointing up out of his messy hair. He looked like one of the sexy cosplayers he’d seen on the Internet while he’d been looking up cat facts.

Shaking off the unbidden thought, Ichigo reached under the bathroom sink and opened the cabinet doors. If he knew teenage girls, and he did, Ururu was going to have one of three items in her girl stash of beauty products, and one in particular had been all he’d heard about in the last few weeks.

 _It’s like magic_ _,_ his sisters’ voices echoed back to him. _And it smells nice! All the girls at school are using it!_

Ichigo’s fingers wrapped around a large tube of cream. Success fizzed like excited bubbles in his chest. He read the label twice to make sure he had the right one.

_Doctor Babyskin’s Miracle Hair Removal Cream. Works in seconds! Dissolves hair down to the follicle! New fresh scent!_

It still sounded like some horrible gimmick, but he’d been subjected to enough demands to touch Karin’s post-shower calves to know that the shit worked, spooky name and everything. Why girls always wanted someone to know how hard they worked to have smooth legs was a mystery. He didn’t care about hair in the slightest.

Ichigo was happily dumping out the shampoo bottle into the toilet and replacing it with the hair cream when the door handle rattled. His heart almost stopped on the spot. He was naked and half-cat in a bathroom that wasn’t his, fondling female products! He’d be arrested for sure!

Unable to tell himself why that wasn’t even a possibility, Ichigo looked up at the window and wondered if he could bail through it in time when the door opened with a single, deceptively strong wrench of the handle.

Urahara made it two steps into the bathroom before he realised what he was looking at and stopped dead. Grey eyes widened slightly. A magazine that had been tucked under his arm slid out unnoticed and hit the tiles with a light smack. Time slowed down to a mortifying crawl.

“I can mostly explain,” Ichigo said, keeping the soul-destroying cringe he was experiencing from reflecting in his voice too much. Urahara just nodded, his eyes scanning about three hundred separate areas of Ichigo’s body with deep interest. “I—I’m the cat.”

“Yes, I recognise the ears,” Urahara replied with mild amusement. Hearing footsteps on the stairs, he smartly snapped the bathroom door shut and locked it properly. “Yoruichi-san’s technique is unmistakable, though it seems like you’ve yet to refine it completely. What are you doing with the soap?”

Ichigo thought about lying. Surely anything would be better than the truth.

“I thought I’d send Jinta bald for pulling my tail this morning.”

“A completely fair response.” A pale hand gestured at the sink. “Please, continue.” Reaching down, Urahara grabbed his magazine from the floor. Ichigo tried desperately not to look at the cover and failed.

“Oh—fuck, Urahara, did you come here to jerk off?”

“Well, it is my house,” was the even response. “And my bathroom. But given that there’s a naked shinigami cat-boy standing in front of me playing with the soap, I suppose I’ll hold off this once.” When Ichigo continued to give him a judgy look, still squeezing hair cream into a bottle of shampoo, Urahara added, “I’ll keep your secret if you keep mine. I’ll even overlook the blatantly sexual lapdance you were performing on me a few hours ago.”

“I wasn’t coming onto you!” Ichigo said hotly, crushing the tube in his fist. “And I was only doing it because Grimmjow is in the cat closet.”

“My, my. So many secrets under my own roof!”

“This is sick on so many levels,” Ichigo muttered, finally emptying the tube and capping the bottle again. Urahara generously took it from him and shook it to mix with the residual shampoo inside. Cleaning up his own mess with a quick wipe of the face cloth, he took the bottle back and replaced it on the shelf. Stepping around him—and freely tweaking his ears with open curiosity—Urahara let him go with what seemed like a little too much understanding. Was this all a trap?

“You’re not gonna tell anyone, are you?”

“And ruin the fun? Of course not.” He waved off the doubt like it was so much smoke in the air. “You’re always welcome here, Kurosaki-san. I’m sure your visits will be an interesting diversion for the household.” There was actually something genuinely earnest about how Urahara said it. “Yoruichi-san will return in a few days. Feel free to come and go as you please in the meantime.”

“Thanks,” Ichigo said, oddly touched by the generosity as he stood there completely naked in the bathroom with a horny scientist. “I won’t tell Ururu or Jinta about you uh…”

“Fondling my other zanpakutou?”

“Well, I—”

“Releasing the Soukyoku?”

“No, for—”

“Achieving bathroom bankai?”

“I’m leaving!” Ichigo shouted, profoundly grateful when orange fur erupted across his skin and his body shrank back down into his feline form. “Open the door and let me out.”

Maybe the entire thing was just the worst idea he’d ever had.

Really. The worst.

Ichigo ran out the door the moment it opened far enough and darted all the way down the stairs in a blind and traumatised rush. All he had to do was find an open door to the outside world and he could make his way home to unpack everything that had happened.

He was just leaping off the final four steps when he heard a startled curse. Hands grabbed him mid-air—hands that could only have travelled so fast by sonido, since there had been nobody up ahead an instant ago.

“The fuck are you going in such a hurry?” Grimmjow asked, tucking him up high against his chest. Oh, fuck, Ichigo thought, his heart pounding with fright. “You’re puffed up like a ball of that cotton candy shit.” Craning his neck, he looked up the staircase. “Oy, Kisuke! What’d you do to King?”

“Nothing,” sang a faint, merry voice from inside the bathroom. Like hell. The sound that rumbled through Grimmjow’s chest seemed to agree with his sentiment.

“Creepy fucker,” he muttered. To Ichigo, he said, “Hey. Calm down already. Nobody’s gonna hurt you.”

The words sank through his alarm, more or less, but what Ichigo was caught on was the way Grimmjow just called him _King_ _._ If only he knew exactly who he was holding cradled in his arms, tucked against his chest in the crook of one elbow. His free hand was stroking through the plush length of his fur from his cheeks, his head, all the way down his neck and through the soft pelt of his main coat. Ichigo tested his claws against the rail of Grimmjow’s collarbone, feeling a need to sink them in a little, one at a time. When he didn’t wince, Ichigo butted his cheek against the hard white of his jaw mask. He didn’t pull away then, either.

Cat closet, Ichigo thought again, this time with real certainty.

“C’mon, your majesty,” Grimmjow grumbled, sounding reluctant. “If you shut up and let me work I’ll let you sleep on my pillow.”

Hell. Yes.

Maybe it wasn’t the path Ichigo had originally imagined to worm his way into Grimmjow’s good graces, but when all else failed, maybe he’d just have to work with what he was given. And if what he was given was a front-row seat to the life of Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, maybe he could use his cat form for intelligence-gathering—and ways that could help him when he was in his own body, being treated like shit by Grimmjow over every little thing.

Maybe he’d eventually break through Grimmjow’s wall of anger and disdain after all. Even if Yoruichi wasn’t going to be back right away, he had more than enough to occupy himself in the meantime—and it came with two magic hands and a broken mask.

Letting out a short, mumbling sound of appreciation that brewed in his throat, Ichigo allowed himself to be carried away down the hall.

Just until sunset, he told himself firmly.

Just until the sun went down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> urahara walking into the bathroom w an issue of cat fancy y/n
> 
> real talk though, i love you guys and all your weird and wacky comments. thanks for enabling my bouts of cackling madness. you're all p cool~


	3. Chapter 3

After spending a few hours shadowing Grimmjow as he did things around Urahara’s house, Ichigo was dismayed to realise there was a lot more going on than he’d ever really assumed. Well, maybe assumed wasn’t even the right word; Ichigo hadn’t even thought about it at all. Grimmjow was just an angry arrancar who turned up to drink alcohol, brood, pick fights and…well, that was kind of it, wasn’t it?

Turned out, that wasn’t it. Or at least, not all of it. From the warm nest of Grimmjow’s pillow, Ichigo stared out through sleepy eyes as the pissy hollow in question stuck a screwdriver between his teeth and pulled apart yet another one of those fucking mystery gadgets. He was working on the things with a single-minded diligence that probably shouldn’t surprise Ichigo, since if there was one thing Grimmjow was good at it was slapping on his blinders and just going after whatever he wanted. Usually it was his next fight. Seeing that same intensity applied elsewhere was jarring as hell.

But it hadn’t been just the gadget stuff. A few times someone had stuck their head into the bedroom to ask Grimmjow something, and he’d actually answered them. Even the time Ururu asked if he’d seen her new box of sanitary pads. He hadn’t even batted an eye when he told her they were probably stuck to the wall of Jinta’s wardrobe by now, and actually smiled to himself a bit as her blue eyes blanked out in murderous rage.

Tessai even walked in at around lunchtime to bring him a sandwich and some tea, which Grimmjow had diligently pulled the cucumber out of and called the big guy a straight-up monster who was trying to poison him. Ichigo had eaten the cucumber off the side of his plate, mostly using it as an excuse to read more of the blueprints. He’d only managed to scan the overly-long and complicated code for the device when Grimmjow distracted him by feeding him bites of tuna off his palm. Once Ichigo realised he’d basically just eaten the entire sandwich Tessai meant for Grimmjow, he slunk away in a confused walk of shame to the pillow, where he’d stayed the entire time afterwards.

It was there that Ichigo had been pretending to sleep for the better part of an hour, watching Grimmjow sitting cross-legged on the floor of his room, surrounded by blueprints, gadgets, loose screws and wires. With no way to just ask about it, Ichigo was stuck somewhere between annoyed and bored. It gave him a rising urge to disrupt Grimmjow’s work and get his attention back.

Ichigo lashed his tail, watching it flick in front of his eyes like a fluffy pendulum. Weird that being annoyed included his tail going off like a high pressure hose in summer, but that was cats for you. Wriggling himself onto his back, Ichigo stared lazily up to the ceiling and tried to think about Grimmjow bait. Flexing his paws one at a time just felt like a good thinking mechanism, so he did that too.

Ichigo thought for a long while. Just as he came up with a steaming pile of nothing, an enormous blue-haired head appeared above him, his eyes narrowed and sharp.

Grimmjow stared down at him for a long moment. Ichigo squinted back lazily and waited. Finally, a giant hand lifted and hung above the furry expanse of his belly, almost like he didn’t want to actually touch.

If Ichigo knew his cat videos, Grimmjow absolutely wanted to touch. And he’d gotten his attention by accident! Cat bellies were a nexus of the forbidden arts. He should really ask Yoruichi about those things when she returned. Wherever the fuck she’d gone.

The hand was slowly descending to the long stretch of his soft, fluffy, unguarded stomach when the shoji door slammed open with a crack and Jinta commando-rolled into the room, bawling like a five year old.

Startled, Ichigo sliced open Grimmjow’s palm like fresh lunch meat and bolted for the furthest corner of the room. Grimmjow just stared at his hand in angry confusion, still kneeling on his futon where Ichigo had left him. Jinta, oblivious to everything, was gripping his scalp in horror and crying the weird, messy tears of an evil serial killer in training.

“Look at my fucking head!” Jinta bawled, choking on his words as they sobbed out of his mouth. He was holding tufts of his own hair in his fists—tufts that weren’t actually connected to his head anymore. “I’m gonna kill Ururu! How’d her shit get in my shampoo? All I did was use her pads for mopping up some drink I spilt in my room! Tessai would have killed me if he found out! Now I’m  _bald._ " Throwing himself face-first onto Grimmjow’s bed, red hair sifting all over the blankets, Jinta gave a snotty sniffle. “Yuzu could never love a bald fucker. Just kill me.”

From his vantage point on the low dresser at the other end of the room, Ichigo tried not to snort audibly. Jinta looked like one of those troll dolls someone had abused by shaving off patches of his hair. It felt him with a patchwork mess of red strands and horrifyingly white scalp—expanses as smooth and hairfree as Doctor Babyskin had advertised. Amazing, really. Jinta’s only option was to shave his entire head and start over.

“The fuck is a Yuzu?” Grimmjow asked, punching Jinta in the leg with his uninjured hand until he squawked and moved off the bed, leaving all his hair behind. “I don’t give a single shit about any of this. Get the fuck out of here.”

“Not until you brutally murder me.”

“All right,” Grimmjow said, gathering reiryoku around his hand. Jinta took one look at it and ran to the other end of the room, which was unfortunately right where Ichigo was lurking. But instead of trying to kill Jinta, which seemed to be a genuine thing he wanted to do, Grimmjow switched his gaze to Ichigo and hesitated. “Get the hell away from King so I can kill you properly.”

Ichigo felt a strange stab of affection at that. That was situational awareness. Turned out, Grimmjow had more than Isshin did. Surprises all round.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Jinta announced, somewhat nervously. “Why are you so fucking stupid? I just wanted you to ask me what was wrong, not actually try to kill me. Tone deaf asshole, no wonder you’ve got no friends.”

Harsh but fair, Ichigo thought, a little surprised he was agreeing with the redheaded spawn of Satan. But honestly, who the hell decided on murder at the drop of a hat? Grimmjow, apparently, but Ichigo watched closely as his mouth tightened at the comment. Still crouched at the side of the bed, his hand smeared with blood, he did look like a strangely lonely figure glaring at them from the floor.

“Fine. Tell me what the fuck a Yuzu is.” Grimmjow tucked his legs into a cross-legged fold and scowled. “But the second I get bored I’m gonna cero your face off.”

“Deal,” Jinta said, a little too desperately by Ichigo’s estimation. “Her name is Kurosaki Yuzu and she is an angel covered in flesh. But with, like, sunshine coming off her and flowers and—”

“Kurosaki?” Grimmjow interrupted, his eyes turning sharp. Jinta nodded rapidly.

“Ichigo’s sister. Not the scary one, the other one. I’ve been giving her so much free candy for the last few years but I don’t think she’s figured it out yet.” With a slow, cautious approach, Jinta walked to the end of the futon, outside Grimmjow’s immediate reach and sat carefully. Hope was practically beaming out his face, completely ruined by his fucked up sprouts of hair and bald spots. “You’re friends with Ichigo, right? How did you get his attention? They’re siblings, they can’t be that different.”

Ichigo practically swan dived off the dresser and bolted straight into Grimmjow’s lap, instantly and effectively distracting him from what would have probably been some advice to beat the living shit out of his sister. God, why did neither of them know how to communicate like normal human beings? Grimmjow had the excuse of being an undead soul-eating ex-soldier of Aizen’s, but Jinta was just a boy in puberty.

Actually, scratch that.

Grimmjow pulled Ichigo out of his lap and re-settled him more comfortably, which enforced to Ichigo that he was actually sitting in the warm space between Grimmjow’s spread thighs. He actually fit kind of well in there; his own body was soft and comfortable and there was a lot of firm muscle he instinctively wanted to prick his claws on. Also being that close meant Grimmjow was able to pet his head and under his chin easily, even one-handed. It was…fucking weird.

But a little bit nice.

“Kurosaki thinks I’m an asshole,” Grimmjow said flatly, his careful fingers stroking down the curving line of Ichigo’s back. “I’ve got nothing for you there, kid. Just put a hat on and go tell her you want to stick your tongue in her mouth.” Grimmjow stiffened sharply as Ichigo jammed his claws straight into his inner thigh. “Ow! Fucking cat.”

Asshole, Ichigo thought darkly. Telling Jinta to kiss his sister? Jinta was a sweaty little germ who liked to harass scared cats with cleaning equipment. No way was he good enough for Yuzu, who, Ichigo knew, was fully aware of Jinta’s crush and had been milking it the whole time to keep the candy coming. She figured it was due payment for having to put up with ‘guys who don’t know how to communicate their feelings,’ according to Kon’s recitation of the weekly family news. Yuzu might be the sweetest kid in the family but she was still a Kurosaki. The entire fresh produce market feared her intense haggling game. Free candy was a walk in the park for her.

“But Ichigo talks to you even though you want to kill him,” Jinta persisted, and Ichigo kind of had to agree that it sounded weird of him. “And you push each other around and hit each other and stuff. Isn’t that friends?”

Grimmjow and Ichigo both stared at Jinta in disbelief.

“You got bigger problems than the baldness, kid.” Ensconced between two lean thighs, Ichigo soundly agreed with the assessment.

Jinta’s face fell. “I don’t know! Nobody talks to me about this stuff!” He punched the futon in frustration. “All I want is for Yuzu to think I’m cool, and you’re cool, so I thought you could teach me. You know, pointers and stuff. But I guess you’re only useful if I want her to hate me.”

Ouch. Ichigo paused in his concentrated kneading of the thigh in front of him to blink up at Grimmjow, whose shuttered expression was giving nothing away. Jinta wasn’t exactly wrong, since Grimmjow was a terrible role model if he was looking for advice on how to get a girl like Yuzu to like him. Grimmjow didn’t even seem to like himself, let alone anyone else.

“Guess you’re fucked,” Grimmjow said succinctly, but his tone was a few degrees colder than it’d been before. He was almost absently drumming his fingers on Ichigo’s spine by that point, and it made him want to rumble his enjoyment. He had to settle for butting his head and cheeks against the leg in front of him. “Face it: the kid’s a Kurosaki. She’s already out of your league and it won’t fuckin’ matter how much advice you get. Pedigree doesn’t change. You got dirt in your veins.”

Jinta cringed down in on himself, his cheeks slowly flaming red with shame.

“Fuck you, Grimmjow,” Jinta said, his eyes wet with furious unshed tears. “No wonder Ichigo hates you! Everyone hates you! You’re gonna fucking die alone in the garbage!”

“Been there, done that.”

“Fuck you!” Jumping to his feet, still trailing strands of hair, Jinta sniffled roughly and rubbed his eyes. “I take it back. You’re not cool at all. You’re just an ugly stray, just like that thing in your lap!” He bolted for the door and slammed it shut so hard the windows on the other side of the room shuddered. Heavy, rapid footsteps said Jinta was running away, but Ichigo’s ears could hear him struggling not to cry.

Fuck.

Above him, Grimmjow seemed to deflate a little. Ichigo didn’t know what the hell to do or how to leave, so he just sat there for a while, pretending to be an oblivious cat and not the deeply uncomfortable Peeping Tom he felt like he was quickly becoming. In five minutes he’d gone from laughing at Jinta’s misery to actually wanting to comfort the kid. Fucking Grimmjow, there was something seriously wrong in his head. Pedigree? Were they in the fucking feudal era? Yuzu wasn’t some blue blood princess, she was a stress-cleaning mother hen who drank the pickle juice when she thought nobody was looking. And if Grimmjow thought that about Yuzu, what did it make him? Some kind of snobbish bastard with a stick up his ass? When had he ever—he didn’t look down on Grimmjow, he never had! They were supposed to be past that shit by now!

Upset, Ichigo yowled unhappily as hands caged his middle and abruptly lifted him high in the air as Grimmjow stood. It wasn’t immediately clear what the hell he was doing until he walked to the window, yanked it open and dropped him outside in the dirt.

“Fuck off back to your real home,” Grimmjow said flatly, his jaw tight. “You don’t belong here.”

Feeling his pupils bloom and his hackles rise with alarm, Ichigo stared up at him. Why was he being kicked out? Grimmjow liked him! He started to take a step back toward him.

 _“ Get!_ ” A snarl and a tiny cero hit the dirt, spraying it in Ichigo’s eyes. Frightened by the near miss, feeling small and stupid, Ichigo obeyed.

Ichigo ran and ran, just a little orange blur darting between fences and houses, and didn’t stop until he was all the way back home.

It felt like angry blue eyes followed him the entire way.

 

* * *

 

The next two days were spent wondering what the hell to do next. Did he act on his knowledge or just pretend none of it ever happened? It wasn’t like Ichigo had much to go on from his accidental intelligence gathering mission. Also rather than talk to Yuzu about Jinta’s teenage angst and maybe help him out a bit, Ichigo was stuck on the whole tone of Grimmjow’s voice when he talked about the Kurosaki family. Where would he have gotten some weird idea that they were a high class family? His parents were both orphans and Isshin sure as hell wasn’t a captain of Soul Society anymore. He might have been part of a noble family once, but since the mysterious disgrace Kuukaku and Ganju just travelled around respectively blowing shit up and riding boars.

On the second day of puzzling, Ichigo went downstairs and asked his father exactly what it all meant.

“I suppose a noble family is relative,” Isshin mused, clipping his toenails on the living room floor. He was really trying hard to lever the clippers under the edge of his big toenail. “No pun intended. Some people hear it and it’s suddenly all bowing and apologising. Other nobles—say, the Kuchiki clan, for instance—would snort at the Shiba name behind their fans and never invite us to another event. It’s not done, you know. Byakuya’s father was a decent sort, but rules are rules: the disgraced must be forever shunned by the other nobility.”

“Yoruichi and Kuukaku stayed friends, though,” Ichigo pointed out, ducking a flying stray toenail. “God damn it, Dad, can you do that in the bathroom?”

“The light in there is terrible. I actually look ugly in that room.” Another hard click of the clippers. “Yoruichi is a one in a million kind of woman, and a damn good friend. She knows how to sort the wheat from the chaff. Just don’t ever piss her off, Ichigo. Cats hold grudges that last a lifetime, and she’s still got a few hundred left in her.”

So did Grimmjow, Ichigo thought, and figured in that case it must be true.

“If you knew someone for a while and found out they were from a noble house, even a disgraced one, would it change how you saw them?”

But Isshin wasn’t listening; too busy scowling at his toenails as the clippers jammed under his nail. When they finally gave, the liberated nail flew up and scratched Ichigo’s cheek.

“Ow! Gross!” Ichigo rubbed his face. “I’m telling Yuzu.” He left without getting a reply, but he didn’t really need it. The answer was pretty clear anyway. Urahara and Yoruichi had been telling drunk stories of the old days, and Grimmjow had been listening. It didn’t take a detective to figure out how he’d taken that news. Grimmjow hated the idea of anyone being better than him, whether it was true or not. No wonder he hated his guts.

Frustrated and lacking in any kind of ideas how to fix that, Ichigo stomped outside into the backyard and started pulling the dry clothes off the line. It was mostly Karin’s job to bring that stuff in, but it gave him something to do that didn’t involve being attacked by toenails. He had it all inside and folded on the dining table by the time the girls came home, chattering about the high-waisted pants their math teacher was wearing.

“I’m just saying, that crotch seam isn’t giving him a lot of breathing room,” Yuzu said seriously, shouldering her bag to the floor and tugging at her house slipper. “He’s going to get some kind of mould.”

“Mouldy Balls-sensei!” Karin laughed, giving Ichigo a wave. “Hey, nice job Ichi-nii. I’ll dry the dishes tonight.”

“Just don’t hang up the towel in the cupboard after it gets soaking wet,” Ichigo replied, throwing her the empty laundry basket. “Or your teacher’s balls won’t be the only mouldy thing around here. Hey, Yuzu, you got a second to talk?”

“Anything you can say to me you can say in front Karin,” Yuzu said stoutly. Karin, already wearing the enormous basket like a helmet, was doing karate moves on her way to the laundry. They both watched her go. Yuzu shrugged. “But yes, okay. What’s up? If it’s about dinner I’ve already decided on fish curry, so Dad can just stuff his complaints down his shirt. Omega-3 is important in a healthy diet.”

“I—whatever, I don’t care about dinner. It’s about Jinta, the kid at Urahara’s.”

“Yeah,” she replied dubiously. “What about him? If he’s got you passing messages now, that’s even worse than the candy and I don’t want any of that weird boy stuff.”

“No, nothing like that. He’s just changed his hairstyle. Don’t give him a hard time about it, okay?”

“I’d never!” Yuzu protested, offended. “Besides, I don’t even go there much anymore. I have a massive stockpile of lemon drops and mochi I still need to get through.” She looked resolute and firm for exactly five seconds, before she blurted, “What does his hair look like now?”

Ichigo held down a smile.

“Dunno, guess you’ll have to go see for yourself.” He left her there complaining before he could consider the fact he was feeling weird and guilty over both his own actions and Grimmjow’s. The way he’d sagged the moment Jinta had run out of the room was really sticking with Ichigo. It was something nobody was supposed to see, and yet he had. Things Grimmjow wanted to hide from everyone were probably important, right? Stuff like regret and feeling like an asshole, stuff Ichigo probably wouldn’t have credited him with before the transformation.

Feeling like he was learning a little, Ichigo went upstairs to relay it all back to Kon. Telling Kon always helped him think.

 

* * *

 

 Three and a half days after Ichigo’s transformation, he was scrolling through his meagre bank account spendings on his phone when there was a knock on his bedroom door. At the end of the bed, Kon rolled onto his face and kept snoring.

“Come in,” Ichigo said, not looking up. It was too early for dinner. The door opened with a smart snap, stopping just short of the wall.

“I need you to drop this order off to Urahara,” Isshin said, dumping a paper bag on the bed. Also, Kon’s head. “He needs it today, don’t ask questions, and don’t look in the bag.”

“What is it?” Ichigo said immediately, looking at the bag. It was made of stiff white paper, the kind you’d get from the pharmacy, a blank label stuck to it to seal the bag shut. “Viagra? Is it Viagra?”

“Why would Urahara need Viagra?” Isshin asked blankly. “The man is—look, just take the order to the shop and don’t leave until you’ve given it to him in person. I don’t want Tessai going through it like a doubting wife.”

“Is it reverse Viagra?” Ichigo wondered out loud, still thinking about the magazine in the bathroom. “And why do I have to do it? Send Karin or Yuzu.”

“It’s too dark to send my precious daughters,” Isshin replied dismissively. “One more delinquent on the streets will fit right in.”

“You know I pretty much saved the world one time, right?”

“Nobody likes a braggart, Ichigo. Get going.”

That was how Ichigo ended up stomping down the street carrying a mysterious paper bag, hoping to hell the local police didn’t stop him and demand to know what he was holding. It wasn’t his fault he had resting bitch face and conspicuously orange hair. Besides, he almost never beat up mouthy punks on the streets anymore. Not unless they had it coming.

There wasn’t really anyone much around though, even for a summer night. It was barely full dark by the time Ichigo crossed through the shopping district and made his way down the less-savoury streets toward Urahara’s, but it took a lot longer on foot than it would have jumping rooftops as a shinigami. Sometimes Ichigo suspected that his father just forced him to run errands at night for fun and games. Approaching the shop to see its windows shining with soft golden light, looking like a warm lantern surrounded by run-down apartment complexes, Ichigo was surprised to feel Grimmjow’s reiatsu radiating from inside the shop along with the others. Usually he only turned up once every week or two. What was he still doing in the living world?

“Crap,” Ichigo said to himself, realising he was about to walk in there looking about as intimidating as a marshmallow. Common sense would dictate he’d have to watch his tone and not start any fights. Yeah, right. He slid open the door and made his way inside.

He was immediately accosted by a broom in the face.

Again.

“Take that, burgla—oh, hey Ichigo.” Jinta pulled the broom head back and frowned. “It’s not drinking night.”

“I came in through the door, dumbass,” Ichigo complained, rubbing his nose. “The unlocked front door.”

“Yeah, I was just about to go pick up Ururu from the train station,” Jinta explained, scruffing a hand over his shorn head. There was a fine fuzz of red covering his scalp now instead of the patchy mess Ichigo had seen last. “She can walk by herself but she broke some creepy guy’s ankle last week. Tessai says she’s gonna ruin her image and have to live in the woods soon.” When Ichigo didn’t reply immediately, he squinted self-consciously. “What’re you staring at? Bald dudes are in now, and I look way more badass than before.”

“Yeah,” Ichigo agreed, wondering how to escape the topic before he somehow incriminated himself. “You definitely look like a…carjacker now.”

“Hey, thanks man.” Jinta beamed. “Have yourself a good night! Stay clear of Grimmjow though, he’s being a fuckstick to everyone and Urahara’s out for a while.” Shrugging on a jacket, Jinta slipped out the door at a slow jog, sliding the door shut with his foot as he left. His words sank in a minute later.

“Urahara’s out?” Ichigo repeated, and thought about beating his head on the wall. He didn’t want to hang around the shop waiting for Urahara to come back! Fuck that, he’d just put the bag somewhere inside and leave. Tessai still felt like he was in the house—but Isshin had told him not to let him look in the bag. What kind of black market shit was in there? It didn’t feel that heavy.

Suspicious about the timing of it all, Ichigo palmed his phone and tapped out a quick message to Urahara.

_Dad’s sent me down here with your hemorrhoid cream or whatever. Where are you?_

Ever attached to his soul phone, or spirit radio, or whatever he used these days, Urahara was quick to reply.

 **[Sandal-Hat]:** _Ooh, my coke! Don’t let Tessai have the bag, the man has the soul of a murderous crackhead and it’s just bursting to get out. I’ll be home in fifteen minutes. Wait for me!_

Ichigo stared at the message for a long time. Was his dad doing some kind of Walter White shit in the clinic now? No, wait, Urahara was lying. He had to be. The nose emoji and the wind gust were just there to confuse him. Disturbed and more than a little pissed off that he could have been busted drug muling across town, Ichigo pulled his shoes off at the door to the inside of the house and wandered in, his hand sweaty around the damp fold of the paper bag. There was no way it was actual drugs.

Absolutely no way.

The interior of the house behind the shop smelled like fresh curry, reminding Ichigo that he’d missed dinnertime. Seemed like it was a good week for everyone to be making it. He rounded the corner to the sparse room they usually reserved for drinking and immediately died a little inside.

Instead of being holed up in his room where Ichigo had last seen him, Grimmjow was sitting at the low table with a tall lamp beside him, glowering at yet another piece of junk. He was wearing only his sleeveless black outfit minus the jacket, his feet completely bare and tucked beneath the table. The tugged-down zipper showed smooth white scar tissue Ichigo didn’t want to think about too much. On the table were a stack of blueprints held down with various parts, pliers and screwdrivers. Immediate irritation sparked inside Ichigo at the sight. Third time fucking lucky, right? Hell with those goddamn gadgets.

Weird thing was, Grimmjow looked sort of small, compared to the last time Ichigo had seen him. He glanced down at the hands holding the device with uncharacteristic care, skin tingling sharply with remembered sensation. Ichigo snatched his attention away in time for Tessai to wander in from the kitchen, drying his hands on a dishtowel.

“Got something for Urahara,” Ichigo said awkwardly, holding up the bag as evidence. “I think I’m a little early though, is it okay if I wait? I heard he’s out.”

Tessai’s lenses flashed as he tilted his head back slightly. Sweat burst along the back of Ichigo’s neck. He didn’t want to die like this.

“You can have dinner if you tell me what’s in the bag,” Tessai said gravely. Ichigo swallowed, his temples growing damp.

“I—I don’t know what’s in the bag? I’m just delivering the dr—the goods. I mean the gear. Medication. Please don’t kidou me.”

From the other side of the room, Grimmjow was frowning at the two of them with some terrifyingly twitchy fingers going on. Tessai just stared for a long, long stretch of time. Ichigo was too young to die.

“Hmm,” Tessai said finally, throwing the towel over his shoulder. “I made pork curry and rice.”

“I’d love some,” Ichigo said instantly, trying not to crumple with relief. He ignored the way Grimmjow’s eyes slid to him and away. “I’ve heard you’re an amazing cook. Can I just sit at this table here?”

“Of course.” Tessai vanished back into the kitchen in an ominous cloud of curry-scented air, hopefully to serve food and not come back with some Aizen-level shit that would tie Ichigo up. The moment he was gone Ichigo switched his eyes to Grimmjow, who was frowning blankly at his array of electronics like they were somehow more interesting than the death threats he’d almost received just then.

Ichigo looked at the bag in his hand. Then at Grimmjow. It was a long shot, but—

Sliding on his knees across the woven tatami mats, Ichigo pushed the bag into Grimmjow’s face. Now was no time to worry about nobility and bloodlines and cats and hair cream.

“Grimmjow,” Ichigo breathed urgently, “do you have any idea what cocaine smells like and if you do, could you please smell this bag for me _right now?”_

Blue eyes slid to the bag, to Ichigo and back. Grimmjow scowled.

“It’s not drugs, you fucking idiot. Kisuke's got a thing for—you know what, fuck you, Kurosaki. Maybe it’s opium.”

“Opium?” Ichigo repeated. He was mostly ignored in favour of Grimmjow shoving his hand—and the bag—away from the light shining on his oh-so-important work. Retreating to the opposite side of the table Ichigo was left looking at upside down plans that made absolutely no sense. Fuck. He should have known better than to ask Grimmjow for anything.

Half-shoving the bag under the table on the side that Tessai wouldn’t approach from, Ichigo slid his phone out and looked fruitlessly for any new messages. Nothing. Shoving himself down onto the bare mats, ignoring the stack of zabuton in the corner of the room, Ichigo glared across the mess to Grimmjow and refused to feel any sort of anything for the guy who’d only days ago been stroking his fur like it was something precious to him. Liking cats was one thing, but it didn’t make Grimmjow any kind of nice person. Even serial killers had a favourite animal.

Pissed about the entire thing, Ichigo waited until Tessai had deposited a steaming bowl of rice and breaded pork slices swimming in golden curry on the table before him and left. Then he yanked his earphones out of his pocket and plugged them into his phone, belligerently ignoring Grimmjow while he blasted whatever first track his phone could throw at him as he ate. He pinned his eyes to the bowl and chewed like a man condemned, figuring the moment Tessai was looking elsewhere he could just stash the delivery in Urahara’s favourite bedroom drawer and vanish. There was nothing comfortable about this visit and he needed to get the hell out.

Once he had all but a few cooling lumps of rice and curry sauce left in the bottom of the bowl, Ichigo glanced up in the silence between songs to see Grimmjow watching the click of his chopsticks with frowning concentration. He was still holding a cube of metal and wires up high, a weird-headed screwdriver in his other hand. It took Ichigo only a single, practised work of his jaw to make an earbud fall out.

“What?”

Grimmjow flicked his eyes back to his work. “Finish eating and fuck off already. Your fanclub ain’t here tonight.”

“They’re with me in spirit,” Ichigo said, touching his chest like one of the faithful. “Also, I’m here for a reason. Did you run out of toilet paper in Las Noches? Or was it everyone else you gave the shits to?”

“Nel’s never had complaints.”

Ichigo’s brows shot up. “So you’ve finally graduated to calling her Nel? Only took five years and two wars. Good for you, man.”

“Some of us like to work for our meal, Kurosaki.” Grimmjow cast a sly glance across the table. “Don’t mind a little easy fur up your nose, do you?”

Ichigo felt like he was rapidly losing the thread of the conversation, but admitting it felt a lot like losing.

“Weird that you don’t.” Ichigo passed his bowl to Tessai with a nod and a smile. Across the table, a figure in blue and black was seething in the yellow light. “Thought you liked things nice and easy.”

“Make your fuckin’ point.” Grimmjow’s eyes were glacial.

Ichigo swiped his thumbnail across the corner of his lips. “I’m just saying, you sure got sour after you lost to me. What happened to chasing me for that last battle, huh?”

“Lost interest.” With a snort and a twist of his screwdriver, Grimmjow turned back down to his project like nothing even happened. And it wasn’t for show either; he really did study the blueprints and start screwing in the edge of the device with perfect precision, tightening the panel with deft motions. “You think you were the centre of my universe or something?”

“No,” Ichigo grated, his eyes on the screen of his phone. Where was an amazingly furious playlist when he wanted one? “Why, did you think you were mine?”

Grimmjow actually laughed.

“Kurosaki, who the hell in this fuckin’ universe would ever think that?” He hooked the tips of blunt nails under another panel and tugged it out slightly to squint at the coloured wires beneath.

Ichigo ground his teeth. “What, did I miss your baby shower? My bad.”

The pale curve of Grimmjow’s mouth was all the response he got. He just went right back to his work without missing a beat. Throwing himself back-first onto the mats to digest his dinner, Ichigo shoved his stray earbud back in and ignored the asshole entirely to glare up at the ceiling. Nobody needed him or his opinions. The entire cat thing was just bullshit and stupid theories. There weren’t any hidden depths to him, just a lot of attitude and fuckwad behaviour that looped back around to about two hundred billable hours with a qualified therapist.

Grimmjow lost interest in him? Well, Ichigo could lose interest right back.

He was only a pet project until Yoruichi returned, anyway.

They spent a long time like that, time Ichigo absolutely didn’t count on his phone waiting for Urahara to return from whatever damn house call he’d attended. He scrolled aimless shit and blasted music until his battery began to run down, past the time Ururu and Jinta got home and vanished to their rooms, until Tessai said he was heading to shower and meditate before bed. Ichigo knew he should probably be home already, since Yuzu always fretted if he was out after nine. Now that Grimmjow had pissed him off he was more committed than ever to properly finishing his mystery delivery. Besides, Isshin would cover him—or he’d better.

Ichigo was down to fifteen percent battery when he finally stopped his music and opened his eyes to the flat ceiling, watching the faint flicker of shadows across the lamplight in the sparse room. He couldn’t see anything from his position except the twitch and curl of Grimmjow’s bare toes under the table, but he figured something was going on up there. Thing was, did he care enough? Mister independent hollow, Mister didn’t need some snob shinigami talking to him probably had it all in hand. Asshole.

Ichigo pocketed his earbuds and phone anyway, figuring he should conserve whatever power he had left for emergencies. It left him listening to the thick silence of the room for a long while, right up until a screwdriver went flying over his head and hit the opposite wall with a thunk, bouncing back to land in arm’s reach on the floor. Turning his head, he stared at it in contemplation.

Maybe it was going to start a fight, one he couldn’t afford in his human body.

Maybe it was the only chance he’d ever get.

Grabbing the screwdriver, Ichigo sat up slowly and looked at the unfamiliar head of it, wondering what kind of objects needed a screw that looked like a really tiny circular butterfly. Hell, it was almost like…

“Is this a hell butterfly motif?” Ichigo blurted out, squinting at the tip. “What kind of—what technology is this? Did you steal it from Soul Society?”

A hand shot out and yanked the screwdriver away, or tried to except Ichigo was holding onto the rubber handle as hard as he could. Any more force would drag him, flip the table and sprawl all the shit on it. Hard blue eyes glared across the short distance with unsurprised anger.

“Yeah, you fuckin’ trashcan, I’ve been breaking into Seireitei to steal their cable TV. I’m behind on the latest episode of Fuckwits of our Lives.”

“Hey, I happen to love that show,” Ichigo shot back, yanking on the screwdriver. “The arrancar are just about to die horribly for being morons and following an egomaniac.”

“While the hero of the story gets his ass kicked by a sad bat, right? I think I read spoilers on this season.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself.” Ichigo let go of the screwdriver at the perfect moment for Grimmjow to catch all the momentum and hit the floor. “For the record, I was the one who—” no, no he told himself, he couldn’t use that, “—you know, whatever. Do your worst, Macgyver. I’m sure you’ll build a great bomb.”

“Fuckin’ right I will,” Grimmjow said, but there wasn’t any confidence in his words, for all the anger that layered them. He went straight back to matching the blueprints to the device like his life depended on it. Scowling between the two, it took Ichigo a few moments longer than he’d like to admit to realise the code on the prints and the shape of the device were the same as the ones he’d spied as a cat three days ago. Was that why Grimmjow hadn’t left yet? Something was wrong with it?

Propping an elbow on the table, Ichigo smooshed his cheek into his palm and watched the mess unfold, resolute in the knowledge that whatever it was for, Grimmjow wanted to die on the hill of it alone. After all, Ichigo was only good for one battle, or whatever he’d implied with that shit. Interest lost. So yeah, Ichigo let him squirm and swear and scowl.

Twenty minutes later, when the entire cube of metal went flying in the same direction the screwdriver had, Ichigo reached up and caught it in his palm, bringing it down to examine for the first time since he’d spotted it.

“Give it here,” Grimmjow said immediately, his eyes dark and glittering. Ichigo ignored him.

“Why? You obviously don’t want it.”

“Changed my mind. Hand it over.”

“What is it?” Ichigo asked instead, turning it over with delicate care. He wasn’t going to break it or anything, not unless he wanted Grimmjow to break him in retaliation. “What are the plans for?” When Grimmjow just clenched his jaw and held his hand back out, Ichigo thought about pulling away even further. Instead, he passed the object across the table and into his palm. Grimmjow snatched it back and dumped it down on his side of the table, but he didn’t look happy about it. He just went right back to tinkering aimlessly with the screwdriver.

Ichigo scowled at him in silence for another few minutes before he couldn’t keep it in any longer.

“You know, you don’t have to be such an asshole all the time.”

“Don’t worry, Kurosaki; I save it all up for you.” Well, that was a damn lie, but not exactly one Ichigo could point out.

“I’m touched. I always wanted to be special to a junkyard psychopath.”

“And I’m the asshole,” Grimmjow snorted. “Ever think maybe you have it coming? Not everyone wants to be your fucking best friend and braid hair with you. Hurry up and die already.”

Ichigo blinked hard, stung and angry about how much that had actually hurt.

“I can be nice, you know,” he insisted. “It’s not my fault you bring it out in me. You’re always so fucking mean all the time.”

Grimmjow’s head jerked up in surprise, but Ichigo ignored it. God, he was bordering on sulking like a grade schooler, but it was true. Maybe he could dress it up as old enemy shit, or brush it off and be just as harsh back, but Grimmjow was mean. Specifically mean to Ichigo all the damn time, and it wasn’t even his fault. He’d do stupid gadget repairs and talk to Ururu and listen to Jinta’s problems, he’d eat Tessai’s cooking and not insult any of them until they insulted him first, but Ichigo? He was the one Grimmjow attacked without any provocation. Every time.

Turning side-on to the table so he didn’t have to look directly at Grimmjow, Ichigo picked at the label on the paper bag and glared down at the floor. He thought about texting Urahara again but there didn’t seem to be any point since he’d already lied about being back in fifteen minutes. It had been almost two hours. Maybe he was in some kind of trouble. Ichigo doubted it though; Urahara had some weird knack for always landing on his feet. Maybe he was just getting drunk at some karaoke bar somewhere.

“It’s a power generator core from Las Noches.” Grimmjow was scowling at the table like he could burn a hole through it with his glare. “Old Soul Society tech that Kisuke could get plans for. He’s giving me the parts and the plans to fix ‘em so I can get all that shit running again.” He tapped the cube with the screwdriver, ignoring Ichigo’s open-mouthed surprise. “But this one’s fucked. Doesn’t match the plans. Piece of shit just won’t fire up.” Blue eyes lifted to meet his, moody and dark. “Happy now?”

Ichigo was already sliding around the side of the table to get a good look at the plans. It practically shoved him up alongside Grimmjow, since the lamplight only extended across about half of the table from his angle. What he could see was backing up what Grimmjow had said: the plans showed a neatly woven together array of wires inside a case that protected what looked like some kind of crystalline power core. But it also looked nothing like the cube in front of them.

“Are they the wrong plans? It looks kinda…broken.”

Grimmjow just spun the cube slightly, matching the angle of the design. They aligned perfectly on that side, but the other one was a shambles.

“Kisuke says they’re the right plans, but they’re not complete. He won’t lend a fucking hand to help, either. Says it’s my job if I want it so bad.”

“Do you?” Ichigo asked, tracing the lines on the blueprint with a fingertip.

“Do I what?”

“Want it badly.” Grimmjow’s eyes narrowed instantly, and Ichigo almost wanted to take the question back. He’d probably see it as admitting some kind of weakness if he answered. Wanting things. Hollows wanted a lot of things, but to get power back into Las Noches by repairing shinigami technology was…if Ichigo hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he’d have said that would be lower than Grimmjow would ever willingly sink. Ichigo didn’t think it was low, but Grimmjow’s pride was a weird beast. But instead of snarling at him or starting a fight, Grimmjow just looked at the plans where Ichigo was following the nest of wiring. Half of it was hanging out of the bottom of the cube, not tucked in where it should be. But the connections weren’t where they were supposed to be, according to the plans.

“Yeah,” Grimmjow said tiredly. “But fucked if I have any idea what I’m doing.”

“Me either,” Ichigo said, turning until he was almost nose to nose with him, still shoved up against Grimmjow’s flank to catch the best light on the paper. “But give me a look anyway. Move over.”

Grimmjow didn’t move over. “I’ve already gone over this a hundred times. Think you’ve got some kind of magic that can fix it? Gonna think some happy thoughts or something?”

“I’m gonna take this screwdriver and shove it up your ass,” Ichigo replied, shoving Grimmjow’s legs over until he started shifting on his own. The moment his legs unfolded Ichigo slid into the space at the centre of the table, right where the lamp shone down brightest.

The problem was, Grimmjow hadn’t actually been moving anywhere, and now Ichigo was sitting right between his thighs.

Again.

“What the fuck, Kurosaki,” Grimmjow said blankly. His breath was ruffling the hair at the nape of Ichigo’s neck. “You wanna die?”

Instead of answering, Ichigo was squinting at the cube. If the plans really were correct, then it had to be the cube that was incorrect, didn’t it? The plans had to match the device, but they didn’t. Almost like there was a page missing, or—

“Where’d you find it?” Ichigo asked, plucking at the trailing wires. The parts that didn’t have anywhere to go. “Did you pull it from inside the generator it’s supposed to work with?”

“The thing was totalled. Shitload of wreckage in the generator room.” Grimmjow leaned forward until he could see over Ichigo’s shoulder. “It’s gonna go in a new one on the other side of the fortress. I told you, asshole, I’ve looked at every fucking possible way to connect the wires but there’s no port for ‘em. Get off my lap already.”

“I’m sitting on the floor,” Ichigo said absently, squinting at the side of the cube that wasn’t detailed on the prints. “Not my fault the lights in here are so dim. Don’t you think this side looks weird?” He brought it up and spun it to the side that made the least amount of sense. Grimmjow reached over his shoulder and pried off the panel, revealing the mess inside. The wires were all a different colour to the others. “What the fuck is happening in here?”

“See?” Grimmjow said heatedly, jabbing his finger into the nest of electrical knots. “It’s no fuckin’ use. I might as well just throw this one in the trash.”

“How many in total do you have?”

“Three,” Grimmjow replied, and some of the tension in his legs started to unwind with defeat. “I need five.”

The futility of it didn’t escape Ichigo. Three out of five cores wouldn’t cut it, but he was trying to repair them anyway. Maybe Urahara could provide the other two if he proved himself? That sounded a bit like something he’d do. Or maybe they could rewire the system to only use that many, and cut off power to areas they couldn’t even use yet. Or maybe it was all for nothing, and Grimmjow was just being stubborn about it.

Something about that idea made Ichigo want to be stubborn too.

“Let’s do something drastic then,” he said, grabbing the entire foreign part of the core, right where the plans stopped making sense, and pulled. “I’m not gonna let you give up on something this important.”

“Don’t just start yanking on shit, you fucking psycho! I can’t build it back from parts!” Reaching over his shoulder again, Grimmjow tried to both get Ichigo in a one-armed headlock and pull the core out of his hand. Ichigo bit him on the arm with prejudice and kept pulling on the weird-coloured wires, his other hand gripping the cube with a palm that had gone sweaty. Grimmjow had been about to shatter it on the wall; whatever Ichigo wanted to do wasn’t anything that bad. “Fucking let go!”

Grimmjow grabbed the side of the core at the exact same time Ichigo pulled in the other direction.

Something gave a metallic click in the cube, and in one wrench, Ichigo pulled off the entire side of it along with half of its wiring.

They both stared in horrified silence.

“Oh shit,” Ichigo said, dread filling his stomach as he looked at the trailing wires. He felt like he was holding Medusa’s head. “We can just plug it back together again, right?”

Maybe he’d really broken it. If he’d broken the entire thing and Grimmjow couldn’t repair it, he’d probably kill him. Being mean would be the least of his worries. Turning his head to the stock-still presence at his back, Ichigo wondered how he could begin to apologise. The parts just hadn’t matched, that was all he’d been trying to fix.

“What the fuck,” Grimmjow said suddenly, his voice strange. He sounded almost excited. “What the fucking fuck? You just ripped out—that shit’s not meant to be there. It’s not part of the core.” Long fingers grabbed the wires from the part that hadn’t made sense. “It’s the plate connection from the fucking old generator, but it fit like it was part of the—you fucking figured it out, you stupid ginger asshole!”

Still holding the alien piece of metal, Grimmjow crushed Ichigo’s entire upper body in a python-like squeeze that shoved all the breath out of his dangerously soft human body. It took him a second to realise it was a hug, or something like one. Ichigo felt like he was being murdered.

“So I helped?” Ichigo wheezed.

“Yeah you fuckin’ did.”

“Cool. Stop killing me.”

A hard chin ground down on his shoulder instead. The cold bone plates of his mask dug into Ichigo’s jaw. Everything hurt.

“Human body,” he croaked, trying to pinch the forearm crossed over his chest. “Not a shinigami right now.”

“Fucking durability of one of those cookie guys Tessai bakes,” Grimmjow muttered, offended, but he let go and folded himself up, swinging his leg over Ichigo’s ducked head with some insanely bendy move so he could sit beside him instead of behind. Their elbows brushed as they leaned over the blueprints. “Let’s put this fuckin’ thing together the way it’s meant to look.”

It was like working together on a really complicated 3D jigsaw puzzle, Ichigo thought as they replaced the damaged wires with new ones from the supplies and braided them together in ways that matched the plans. Mostly Ichigo was the one reading the plan and calling out connections, while Grimmjow bent his head low over the cube and worked some insanely tiny pliers with surgical precision, his blue hair trailing down into his eyes unnoticed. He looked—not happy, but the intensity was back in his face as his eyes darted between the core and the plans, making calculations and planning for the next step, and the next.

Ichigo had never seen Grimmjow look quite so…clever. Now that he knew what it was all for, he couldn’t even feel annoyed anymore. Hell, he wanted to help, not demand his attention the way he’d wanted to as a cat. As King. Privately, Ichigo wondered if Grimmjow missed his furry stray, despite running him out of the lot in fear.

Maybe he could come back sometime.

Just to keep an eye on things.

Urahara came home just in time to see them putting the final touches on the casing, both of them sweating nervously as Grimmjow held the cube while Ichigo pushed the final panel into the ports they’d revealed. It snapped together with a satisfying click.

Then, nothing.

The cube stayed dead and dark.

“Shit,” Ichigo said starkly. “Did we miss something?”

“Yes, the ‘On’ button,” Urahara said above them, scaring the shit out of them both. Smiling crookedly, he leaned down and stroked two fingers over the butterfly engraving on the top of the cube. Leaning in together, Ichigo and Grimmjow held their breath expectantly as the core began to hum. Something clicked inside the metal casing.

When brilliant white light started pulsing through the engravings and Ichigo’s hair started to stand on end from the static charge, Grimmjow sat back and swiped sweat out of his eyes. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes were a little wider than usual. The look he swung slowly to Ichigo was a little stunned.

“Well done, well done,” Urahara said, nodding at the cube. “Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes is all you need! Now, Kurosaki-san, where have you put my vitamin gummies?”

“Vitamin gummies?” Ichigo repeated, tearing his gaze away from Grimmjow’s. “I thought it was something important!”

“Nutritional health is very important,” Urahara said, fishing out the bag from beneath the table. “And Tessai-san is incredibly strict lately with my sugar intake. Thank your father for me, won’t you?” He ripped the label off and pulled out a plastic jar of—yep, sugar-dusted chewable vitamin gummies. Ichigo watched in dismay as he tossed back four of them at once and turned for the hallway, his green haori flaring around him as he strode away. “A productive night, wouldn’t you say?” The words were called over his shoulder.

Grimmjow was frowning at the place Urahara had been standing in.

“I can’t tell if he’s fucked in the head or he’s a genius.”

“I think it’s both,” Ichigo said, already getting to his feet. “Anyway uh, good luck with the power thing.”

“Yeah.” Grimmjow started sweeping the off-cuts and wire filaments into his hand, cleaning up the table. He wasn’t looking up.

“We make a good team,” Ichigo added hopefully. “If you get stuck with the others, I could—I mean, if you wanted, I—”

“What, you want credit now or something?” Grimmjow snorted. His lip curled. “Bet you think I’m in your debt. Couldn’t have done it without you, Kurosaki. Good job, Kurosaki. Have a fuckin’ medal.”

Ichigo’s shoulders dropped slowly. So did his hesitant smile. In fact, it disappeared altogether. Turning away, he wondered if there was something clever and cutting he should say in reply, but he couldn’t think of anything. For a second there they’d worked together, and it had been great. Figured it would just be a freak accident. Grimmjow was happy to take his help when it suited him, and that was about it. Crisis over.

Feeling used and miserable, Ichigo slid open the door and walked through it, trying to spot where he’d left his shoes. He pulled them on without really looking at them.

“Hold up,” Grimmjow said rapidly, just as Ichigo was leaving through the shop’s front door. “Hey.”

God, what else did he have to say? Fuck the entire night. Ichigo turned back and squinted in the darkness of the shop. Grimmjow was just a black outline against the yellow light coming from the house.

“You actually did good, and you didn’t need to.” His outline hunched down a little. “I’ll—try not to be mean next time.”

Ichigo stared.

“Really?”

“I said I’d try, not that it’d fuckin’ work,” Grimmjow snapped. “Quit gaping at me, you fuckin’ fishhead.” The door slid shut with a hard crack of wood on wood. Now standing in pitch darkness, Ichigo blinked blindly for a while, feeling a bit like the gaping fish Grimmjow had just called him.

He was going to try not to be mean?

To  _Ichigo?_

Holy shit.

He was definitely coming back as King now. There were things afoot he absolutely couldn’t miss out on. Namely, the emotional journey of Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez from furious rude asshat to…someone who actually recognised when they were being a furious rude asshat and did it anyway, probably. But hey, baby steps.

Feeling cheered by the surprising turn, Ichigo wandered out into the night.

If Yoruichi wanted to stay gone a little longer before she came back and outed him as a cat spy, maybe he wouldn’t exactly have a problem with that.

Just for a little while.


	4. Chapter 4

“I get to go to Urahara’s twice in two weeks? Am I dying or something?” Kon asked, shooting Ichigo jittery, paranoid looks out the corner of his eye as they walked. “You usually never let me come more than once a month. What gives?”

“Keep your voice down.” Ichigo glanced around the shopping district for anyone that might have noticed Kon having a conversation with himself. “If you get carted off to the psych ward again Dad says he’s leaving you there for the week.”

“That was one time!” Kon yelped when he received a direct fist to the stomach for that. “Fuck, fine, I’ll whisper. Stupid shinigami ghost rules. But you didn’t answer my question.”

Damn right Ichigo hadn’t answered. Truth was he hadn’t been able to return to Urahara’s since fixing the power core with Grimmjow, because Isshin had decided that week was a great time to need help replacing the patient bed frames in the clinic. Instead of paying professional removalists to do it, he’d offered Ichigo a deposit into his ‘moving the fuck out of home’ savings account if he’d do it all himself. Great plans went astray when there was cold hard cash on the table, after all. The result was that the end of the week had crawled up to greet Ichigo without ever going back to the shop until the weekend drinks night had rolled around again. Turning up to that as King was out of the question, even if Urahara knew what he was up to.

Realising Kon was about to punish his silence by unzipping his fly in public, Ichigo grabbed the zipper and hauled it back up before he could completely ruin his reputation. The eternal pitfalls of letting a cranky pervert occupy his body while he wandered around in his shinigami form.

“Don’t touch my dick,” Kon complained, slapping his hand away from his crotch. “That’s private property, and I have rights!”

“Its only yours til midnight, Cinderella. That dick is a rental.”

“Yeah, well in the terms of this lease agreement, you can’t touch this without giving twenty-four hours notice. Fondle your own spirit dick.” When Ichigo rolled his eyes, Kon’s hand shot out to sack-whack him. The shot doubled him over for three seconds longer than it should have. When he straightened, eyes narrowed into murderous slits, Kon looked a trifle nervous. “Now, Ichigo, you can’t attack me while I’m in your body. Think about the consequences!”

“You get a ten second head start.”

Kon took it. Whatever the locals thought about a twenty year old guy leaping thirty feet in the air on a Friday night, Ichigo didn’t really care anymore. He was too busy giving chase, trying awkwardly to run while Kon darted over rooftops and down alleyways, stopping occasionally to check if he’d shaken him. He never did.

The thing about Kon was, even when he was being an annoying asshole he was always entertaining, and Urahara had told him in no uncertain terms that neither Grimmjow or Yoruichi would be showing up this time for drinks. Ichigo couldn’t think of many things worse than just hanging out with drunk Urahara warbling about the good old Soul Society days while Tessai used kitchen twine and one of Ururu’s old dolls to demonstrate his latest kidou bondage rope design. So, Kon got invited twice in a row, if for no other reason than he always offered to let Tessai tie him up, and like an idiot, he always forgot Urahara got handsy when he was three deep in sake. Also because Grimmjow wasn’t there, it meant Ichigo didn’t have to worry about Kon goading him into tearing his head off. Or pissing his pants in fear. Or just…everything. Anything.

So while the night didn’t show much promise, it did beat staying at home watching Yuzu pluck Isshin’s burgeoning monobrow in the kitchen. They really needed to get some decent lighting in the bathroom.

Ichigo let Kon think he’d gotten away right up until he was three steps from the front door of the Urahara Shop, when he flash-stepped silently up behind Kon and pinched his ass with prejudice. Squealing, Kon flailed so hard he headbutted the sliding door to the shop.

“Ow! Ichigo! I have to sit on that!” Pink-faced and sweating at his hairline, Kon tried to swat away the hard grip Ichigo had. Was it weird? Maybe, but so was their whole relationship. It didn’t feel like sexual assault when it was his own body, and besides, Kon was owed with interest. “Quit it! Only Yoruichi can touch me there!”

“I’ll be standing in for Yoruichi tonight.”

“No! Help! Non-consensual ass-touching! Urahara!”

“Urahara can’t help you now, you ball-slapping moron,” Ichigo said darkly, running around behind Kon in a circle as he tried to escape. In pure desperation, Kon tried to reach back as he ran and poke him in the eye. He got his mouth instead; one salty finger right between Ichigo’s teeth.

It was that exact scene that Grimmjow slid the door open to.

Just two of Ichigo, squealing and molesting each other on the doorstep. Grimmjow’s expression blanked out with surprise before he could control himself. Ichigo and Kon sprang apart and stood rigidly at attention, hands behind their backs. Ichigo wondered if a person could die from too much blood pooling in their fucking mortified faces.

Grimmjow squinted at them both and rubbed his temple. In the golden light of the shop his hair looked kind of damp and rumpled compared to his usual style, and he wasn’t wearing his jacket at all. The look he shot Ichigo was about three layers of doubtful.

“Am I concussed, or are there two of you fuckers right now?”

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Ichigo blurted out. Anything to distract him from what he’d just witnessed. “Urahara said—”

“Urahara says a lot of shit. Doesn’t make any of it true.” Narrowed blue eyes switched to Kon. “The fuck are you? Smell like Kurosaki, but you don’t look like a pain in the ass.”

Hey, Ichigo thought with remembered indignation. He’d said he wouldn’t be mean anymore.

“I’m Kon!” said Kon, scratching at the crown of his head. Ginger spikes of hair stood up in his wake. With no direction from Ichigo on how to steer the conversation, because Ichigo was still occupied with trying not to die on the spot, he just opened his mouth and let fly. “I’m the mod soul who lives in Ichigo’s body when he’s not using it. We’re having a disagreement about proper ownership of his dick tonight. Do you think that while I’m in his body it should be mine, or is it always his and I just get to use it?”

“Kon, shut up,” Ichigo said through clenched teeth. Grimmjow’s eyes had dropped to Kon’s crotch.

“None of my fuckin’ business.” There was more bite in the statement than Ichigo knew how to respond to. “What’s a mod soul?” Grimmjow was still barring the entrance, fingers curled around the wooden frame of the door to hold it at the width he wanted. “Soul Society just makin’ up fake shinigami now? Some kind of slave army?”

“No,” Kon snapped, nervous and defensive. Then his head cocked. “Well, actually, yeah. But they killed all my siblings once they figured it was dirty and unethical to put us in corpses and make us fight, so I’m the only survivor. Who knew Soul Society had a conscience, am I right? Those rascals!” He laughed the way he looked: friendly and missing some brain cells.

Grimmjow stared at Kon in silence for a long, long moment from the doorway. His eyes were so narrow and heavy-lidded there was almost no blue visible at all, just a lot of slanting estigma. Ichigo didn’t know if he should try to just barge in or let the entire messed up tragedy continue to its inevitable conclusion.

“I’m the last male arrancar,” Grimmjow said finally, like it was nothing either way. “Guess the shinigami couldn’t kill either of us.” He held out his hand. “Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez.”

Ichigo’s jaw dropped. Kon lit up like a festival firecracker, grabbing the proffered hand and squeezing it. He looked a little bit starry-eyed.

“Hey, nice to meet you! Guess we’re both like collector’s editions! Do you have a lot of alcohol in here?” Kon turned and looked at Ichigo suspiciously, still kind of shaking Grimmjow’s hand. “You said this guy was a total asswipe. Were you just trying to stop me from meeting my new best friend? That’s rude, Ichigo. I’m disappointed in you.”

“Yeah, Ichigo,” Grimmjow sneered, but there didn’t seem to be much force behind it. “Finally found a version of you I can stomach.” Using the hand clutching his, Grimmjow yanked Kon inside and slammed the door shut in Ichigo’s startled face.

“Hey! Let me in!”

“Shithead shinigami use the back entrance!” was the reply barked through the door. “Asswipe.”

Ichigo grabbed the door and yanked, but Grimmjow had bolted it. He almost threw it completely off its tracks trying to get it open, which probably wouldn’t have endeared him to Tessai. What the fuck was happening?

“Asshole, I called you an asshole!” Ichigo yelled at the closed door. “And you are one if you leave me locked out here! So much for being a decent fucking person once in a while.” Angry and embarrassed, more than a little upset by the whole scene, Ichigo thought about just bailing on the night altogether—but he knew he couldn’t leave Kon there without supervision. Grimmjow might like him at first glance, but if anything was crystal clear it was that Grimmjow’s stupid shitty mood swings happened at random. “Fuck!”

Ichigo didn’t know who he wanted to kill more in that instant. Grimmjow, for continually and reliably proving he was a complete dickhole, or Kon for pulling the friendship rug completely out from under him and bonding with Grimmjow in twenty seconds flat. Fuck it, maybe he should just go home, let Urahara referee the night. It’d serve him right for lying.

Unhappy and baffled that the night could turn to total shit on him inside of a couple minutes, Ichigo turned around to mope his way to the back door and see if it was open. Because who was he kidding? He wasn’t going anywhere.

“Psst! Ichigo! Down here!” A voice was hissing at him from around the side of the shop. When he approached, Ichigo saw a shadowy, round head was peeking out a window in the darkness. “Don’t even bother, Grimmjow totally locked the back door too. Can you fit in the window?”

“Jinta?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Hurry up! I’m in his room and I don’t want to die tonight.”

That was how Ichigo ended up getting into the house: like a burglar, aided and abetted by a teenage delinquent with a buzz cut and a spare pair of house slippers. Jinta slid the window shut and latched it while Ichigo struggled into his inside footwear, handing off his woven sandals to Jinta, who stuffed them down his pants.

“I gotta get them back to the front door without being sprung helping you,” he whispered by way of explanation. “I heard you guys giggling and shit out the front so I was listening from the window.”

“We weren’t giggling,” Ichigo said grudgingly. “Anyway, why is Grimmjow in such a shitty mood?”

“Shitty mood,” Jinta repeated, squinting at him in the half-light coming from the hallway. “He’s happy as hell! He totally delayed his next trip back to Hueco Mundo so he could drink tonight, I’m sure of it.”

“This is what happy looks like? He just locked me out and said Kon was a better version of me than I am.”

“I didn’t say he was being nice. C’mon, let’s get out of here. I’m pretty sure this room is haunted by all his bad karma and I don’t want any of it to get on me.” Ichigo let Jinta bundle him out of the room, steering him out into the hallway and shutting the shoji door with a near-soundless rasp. When nobody came marching down the hallway, they both sighed in relief. Leaving Jinta to deposit the shoes at the door, Ichigo squared his shoulders, clenched his ass and strode toward the living room where the table would be set up.

“Oh, Kurosaki-san! You made it!” Urahara said cheerfully, raising his sake dish in greeting. They were already seated at the table, snacks and sake arranged so everyone could reach it. “We’re one extra tonight because Grimmjow doesn’t know when he’s outstayed his welcome, but budge up, budge up. We can all fit at the table.” He started fussing ineffectually at Grimmjow to move up slightly but Ichigo waved them off, figuring it was safer to fit himself between Tessai and Kon. It put him right across from Grimmjow, who was staring at him calculatingly.

“I locked both the doors.”

“I used the key,” Ichigo said breezily, arranging himself on the zabuton Tessai shoved under his ass before he landed.

“What key?”

“This one.” Ichigo raised him the middle finger. When Grimmjow just snorted, he switched his eyes to Urahara. “Do you have better sake this week? You don’t have to worry about Yoruichi making natto this time.”

“I have medium quality sake and I have some of Tessai’s smuggled Seireitei moonshine. It once sent Hiyori-san blind for three days straight. Before the great exile, of course.”

“I want that one,” Kon said promptly, and it was on the tip of Ichigo’s tongue to agree and happily put him out of commission for the rest of the night. Instead, because he actually cared about the state of his liver when he re-entered his body, he shook his head at Urahara.

When Tessai poured, Ichigo took his drink, but he wasn’t really interested in being social. It all felt like one of those obligatory nights out where he’d probably rather to have stayed home after all. Sipping slowly from the shallow dish in his hand, Ichigo watched Kon as he tried to navigate Grimmjow as a sentient being who talked and shook hands and didn’t instantly insult people. People like Ichigo.

Was he sulking? Undoubtedly, but fuck if he’d laid the groundwork for this only to be blocked from receiving any benefits. Happy Grimmjow? Talking to Kon? He’d walked into some kind of bizarre parallel dimension. It was sick. Unnatural.

Ichigo had never been so jealous in his entire life.

“So what’s Las Noches like, anyway?” Kon was asking, wriggling on his cushion until he sat in something that mirrored Grimmjow’s lazy tucked leg, crooked knee slouch. “Are there hollow girls there?”

“Yes, Grimmjow-san, tell us about the hollow girls,” Urahara said. His cheeks were pink enough that Ichigo suspected he’d gotten started on the sake early. “I hear it’s quite a playhouse these days.”

Grimmjow drank long and slow, knuckling a drip of clear sake from the corner of his mouth as he finished. The look he shot Kon was considering. Something about the way his eyes scanned Kon’s face—Ichigo’s face!—made Ichigo’s stomach knot up in dismay.

“Too many of them,” he said with a shake of his head. “Five fucking arrancar women, all screeching about getting the hot water fixed and running around naked and shit.”

“Naked arrancar girls,” Kon breathed, practically fumbling his dish to take a fortifying drink. “A harem of naked, exotic hollow girls.”

Ichigo snorted rudely. Grimmjow’s brows twitched in irritation.

“Something to say there, Kurosaki?”

“Just trying to picture Nel peeling grapes for you.” Feeling petty and mean about it, Ichigo went in for the kill. “Didn’t she have to save your life back in Seireitei?”

Grimmjow’s look was withering. “Shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”

“Sorry I wasn’t there to see it happen.” Sipping his sake, he let the smooth flavour hit the back of his throat. “I was kind of busy.” Blue eyes turned practically arctic with the implication.

“I don’t like this tension,” Kon said nervously, looking between them both. “Why are we angry?”

“We’re a bit pent-up,” Urahara said, elbowing Tessai and taking the tokkuri from him. “Kon-san, it’s best not to get in between those two. Why don’t you come sit on my side?” He patted the space between himself and Grimmjow, and Kon, like an idiot, jumped to comply with a relieved look.

“Kon,” Ichigo said wearily, sighing when the moron sat straight down and Urahara started petting his spiky orange head. “You never learn.”

“I do,” Kon countered, “but I’m also starved of affection. Be gentle with me, Urahara.”

Squashed by the sudden intrusion on his right, Grimmjow frowned at them both and moved one zabuton down, putting him right beside Ichigo on the vacated cushion. Angling his body slightly away, Ichigo nodded to Tessai in thanks as his dish was refilled. He had it almost to his lips when a fingertip flicked the underside of the porcelain, spilling sake down his chest between the folds of his kosode. Ichigo gaped at the tepid beads of alcohol slipping over his skin, quickly spreading under his clothes.

“Hm,” Grimmjow said idly. “Thought I saw a bug. My mistake.”

“Coming here was a fucking mistake,” Ichigo seethed just low enough for Grimmjow to hear, putting the dish down with a clatter. He shook his head at Urahara. “Mind if I use the bathroom for a sec?”

“Not at all! You know the way,” Urahara replied immediately, snapping his fan open to hide what would have been a conspiratorial smile. Ichigo ignored the crack and jumped to his feet, stalking out of the living room and down the hall to the stairs, reeking like sake and about as tense as he’d ever been in a social setting. He felt the curious eyes on him as he left, but screw it. Couldn’t be fun and jokes every week. He’d just clean up and go the hell home.

Sponging his uniform clean of the majority of the spill didn’t actually take long, using a wet washcloth to wipe over his skin and carefully sop up the excess staining the black fabric until he didn’t reek like a cheap bar anymore. It took even less time to plug in the hairdryer tucked inside the bottom drawer and dry the washed fabric until there was nothing left to show of Grimmjow’s hilarious fucking joke. Had he deserved it? Who the hell even knew. The doubt was enough to tell Ichigo he wasn’t a total victim.

Unhappy and tense, he put everything away and tidied the sink—and didn’t immediately leave. He sat on the rim of the small tub and hid out there while he tried to decide if he was going back out or just bailing on Kon completely. He could take care of himself, anyway. He wasn’t the one starting fights.

A hard knock on the door startled Ichigo out of his broody thoughts so hard he shot up to his feet.

“Coming!” Pulling the door open to jump out and apologise for hogging the bathroom, he ran nose to mouth with Grimmjow, who was practically pressed in the doorway. Both of his bare arms were up to brace on the frame, stopping Ichigo from leaving. His face was the opposite of friendly.

Rubbing his nose self-consciously, wondering why everything was hitting him in the face lately, Ichigo scowled and refused to step back. Grimmjow maintained his glare for another few seconds.

“Well?” Grimmjow said finally. Expectantly. “How’d I do?”

“Do?” Ichigo repeated, feeling annoyed and stupid. “With what? Shoving me in a wet t-shirt contest I never asked for?”

“With being…nice.” The word sounded like it was being dragged from him. “Your little clone likes me now.”

Realisation was beginning to dawn on Ichigo, and it was terrible. Grimmjow was a certified moron. Somewhere in the tangled wires of his brain he’d been listening enough that night to figure out that being an asshole was bad and he should maybe try to use some manners—but none of that actually included being civil to Ichigo. Like he was somehow different, always had been, and he didn’t even deserve the bare minimum of effort. Everyone else might, but Ichigo? No.

He was just the shinigami Grimmjow used to want to fight.

“I give up,” Ichigo said wearily, ignoring the way Grimmjow’s eyes flickered. “I seriously give up. Live your best life, Grimmjow. I hope you make a lot of friends.” Pulling slack fingers out of his collar, he shouldered his way around him and headed for the stairwell.

“Oi,” Grimmjow said strangely, but by then Ichigo was down the stairs and hardly listening.

Maybe he had tried and he just couldn’t manage it, Ichigo thought rigidly, his jaw clenched tight. People like Kon were easy and new. Tessai, Jinta, Ururu, Urahara, they were either so inoffensive or forgiving that just a little familiarity probably worked with them. Jinta didn’t even seem to care anymore that Grimmjow had told him he was a dirty no-hoper.

Maybe Grimmjow just didn’t like him, and never would.

Well, fine. Some people just didn’t get along. It stung, but he’d get over it. Pulling in a quick, fortifying breath, Ichigo reached the end of the hall and tugged open the shoji door to the living area. Someone had closed it, because he could have sworn it was open before. He stepped inside.

“Surprise,” Yoruichi said from the middle of the room, legs apart, hands on her hips and grinning like the cat that got the cream. She was still dressed in the backless abbreviated uniform she reserved for Soul Society business, an orange scarf looped loosely around her neck. Her yellow eyes glowed with amusement. “Did you miss me?”

Yoruichi was back.

“Yeah, I missed you,” Ichigo said with heartfelt relief, his awful mood melting away like snow in sunlight. Fucking Yoruichi. In two long strides he grabbed her around the waist and lifted her off the floor, absolutely trying to crush her bones with angry, happy exuberance. “You’re dead to me, Yoruichi. Dead. Buried. Fucking leave a note next time,” he bitched into the hard bones of her shoulder.

“You’re so needy. I love it,” she laughed wickedly when he dropped her back on her feet. “But you’ve gotta let me roam free, Ichigo.” Her eyes slid over his shoulder. “Oh, look who’s still here. Why the long face?” Ichigo turned slightly to see Grimmjow stalk in, giving them both a wide berth. His expression was as hard as granite and he didn’t look at either of them.

“Fuck off.” Grimmjow threw himself down at the table again, reaching for the tokkuri with a possessive, angry hand. Like prey scenting danger Kon shifted away from him minutely, almost pressed into Urahara’s side by then. Yoruichi blew out an unimpressed sigh and reached into her cleavage, pulling out a folded piece of paper. She threw it with expert aim: it got Grimmjow right in the eye.

“Be a bit nicer to me when I’m copying plans for you,” she said, not bothering to wait for him to read the contents. More power core designs? Ichigo wondered, briefly distracted from his own intentions. Then he remembered.

“I’ve got something for you,” he told Yoruichi urgently. “We have to go to your bedroom. Right now.” Interest sharpened her gaze, and when he didn’t waver, it sparked into realisation.

“Does it involve taking off our clothes?”

Ichigo smiled. “Yeah.”

Yoruichi hooted in delight and leapt for the tokkuri, which Grimmjow had relinquished in favour of reading the note. Instead of pouring herself some sake, she grabbed two dishes off the table and started reversing out of the room.

“We can talk shop later, Kisuke. This is overdue.” He simply waved them both off with his fan, his palm pressed over Kon’s viciously complaining mouth. Ichigo could only imagine what he was going to say: Yoruichi had barely gotten back and Ichigo was hogging all her attention. He would have apologised, but Yoruichi grabbed him and flash-stepped down to her bedroom. How she always managed to lug him around like he weighed nothing was one of those stealth corps secrets, probably.

“I can’t believe you just left for a whole fucking week,” Ichigo said moments later as he yanked his sash free and pulled off his clothes, watching the sifting light of a masking kidou fall down around the bedroom. “It took me four days to figure out how to get rid of the ears and tail when I’m back in my shinigami form. I looked like one of those fetish cafe rejects. Then Urahara tried to touch me!”

“Kisuke tries to touch everyone once they’re legal,” Yoruichi scoffed, slinging her scarf across the room and pulling off her leg warmers. The rest of her uniform followed in no time. “Trust me, he’s not interested in any of you whilever Tessai’s the only person who can tie his balls with vibrat—”

“Stop talking,” Ichigo said desperately, dumping the last of his uniform and throwing himself into the change. Yoruichi’s stealth kidou techniques were for masking everything in the room: reiatsu, sound and even replaced the room with a fragile illusion of itself. It was shattered easily when someone walked right in, but it would hide what they were doing. Feeling the room grow huge around him, ballooning out slightly with his strange, slightly desaturated vision, Ichigo tested his fluffy paws on the tatami while Yoruichi squatted in front of him, knees wide and stark naked. God damn it. “Why are you doing this to me when I’m at eye level with…”

“My meat chute?”

“No—”

“Wet dangai?”

“Please stop—”

“I’ve got it! Tuna tunn— _ow!_ Not on the clit!” Ichigo yanked his paw back and sheathed his claws before she could grab it and hissed for all he was worth. It was clear why she and Urahara were best friends, and Ichigo hated it with all he was made of. He watched her simply roll back one length, laughing despite the near-miss. Coming forward on all fours, still brown-skinned and lean, she beamed at him. “Look at you, Ichigo! My fine student. So big and fluffy and orange.”

Despite himself, Ichigo preened and tucked his chin, flopping down onto the floor to expose his belly. The hand that sank into his plush fur felt like heaven with its hard little nails dragging up and down his stomach and chest. His purr couldn’t be contained.

“Hey, have you seen yourself properly yet?” she asked after a few more seconds of the treatment, rubbing his ear tufts between her fingertips. “With a frame of reference, I mean.” Before Ichigo could gather his thoughts enough to ask what she meant, her form vanished in a wisp of golden light, shrinking down into her own sable cat form. Golden irises ringing big dark pupils stared at him.

Flipping up to his feet, Ichigo marvelled at her. “You’re smaller than I am!”

“No, I’m sleek. Like a black knife. You’re more like a clenched fist.” She butted her head under his chin, the vibration of her own light purr rumbling through the contact and into his neck. “Is it strange if I’m curious about having sex in this form? You’re the only other cat-form shapeshifter I’ve met. Officially.”

“It’s a bad idea,” Ichigo said with finality. “I was researching stuff on the internet before you gave me the rest of the information, and cat dicks look like something out of a horror movie.”

“You haven’t even seen your own yet?” Yoruichi shoved her head under his belly, pushing forward until she was completely under him. “Come on, roll it out. I want to see.” A sheathed paw prodded at him.

“Get out of there!” he yowled. “I’m not an anatomy doll!” Confused and angry, he started licking her back with his comb-like tongue. Aghh, fucking cat instincts! But it was too late, the loose fur had gone down his neck already. She emerged from his fluffy underbelly like a pool of black ink, blinking at him like nothing was wrong.

“Did you just groom my ass a little? That felt nice.”

“This is weird,” Ichigo moaned, feeling molested and out of sorts. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m gonna change back before anyone finds me here. The household uh…kinda knows me as a neighbourhood spirit cat.” Yoruichi’s long tail stuck straight up in the air.

“Tell me everything.” Then she stuck her tongue against the base of his ear and started cleaning. Ooh, weird.

Ichigo gave her the short version, but covered everything he could think of. She snorted over the bit about Urahara in the bathroom and the hair removal cream, but went dead silent for the parts where Grimmjow was actually kind of secretly into King.

“So you’re his feline friend in one body, and his rival in another one?” Yoruichi bundled herself down into a loaf beside him. “Ichigo, that’s devious. I’d approve, but I have no clue what you’re trying to gain. Are you gathering intelligence so you can humiliate him later?”

“No,” Ichigo said emphatically, driving his claws into the tatami and picking at it with prejudice. “He’s just—it was all an accident anyway. If you’d been here like you were supposed to be, none of it would have happened. But Grimmjow’s hated me since day one, and I guess I thought he’d like me by now. But he doesn’t.”

“And now you’ve realised he likes King,” Yoruichi sighed in her old man voice. “So you’re desperately leeching whatever affection you can get from him. That’s pathetic, just so you know.”

“I know.” Ichigo lowered his chin down onto the cushion of his paws. “Plus the one and only time I really thought I’d gotten through to him ended up driving him into Kon’s fucking embrace. I hate them both. Officially. Why do I even give a shit about Grimmjow?”

“Probably because you can sense he gives a shit about you.”

“The only scenario where that could be true is if he literally hurled shit at me from a safe distance.” Stretching hard, Ichigo stood up and washed his paw, dragging it over his ear where he could feel some fur out of place from Yoruichi’s grooming. She watched him with fascination.

“Are you  _sure_  you don’t want to try cat sex?”

“Please never ask me that question again as long as I live.”

“Pussy.” Ichigo laughed despite himself.

Golden light swirled around her smaller body, expanding in one exhale of reiryoku until she stood tall and naked once more. Her long purple hair fell across him like a blanket as she knelt down to grin at him. Her teeth looked white and sharp.

“Well, because we have a feline bond of understanding, and you are my beloved student, I’m going to help you. Stay in your cat form, Ichigo. I have a plan for tonight.”

“What kind of plan,” Ichigo asked dubiously, not liking the gleam in her eyes. In a couple of quick motions, she shoved all his clothes into a low cabinet and locked it.

“The kind of plan where I find a stray outside after Kurosaki Ichigo leaves through my window, and it knocks over all my sake.”

Ichigo had half a second to parse that before Yoruichi dumped the tokkuri’s contents all down his fluffy, majestic back.

“Oh, fuck! It stinks!” he yowled in horror, squinting his eyes shut and trying to run away from the stench. The fumes were disgusting. “Do you hate me or something?!”

“I adore you, stupid. Which is exactly why you’re going to be an angry, bad-tempered stray who won’t let anyone touch him.” Her smile could have split her face. “No-one without hierro as armour, anyway.”

Ichigo cracked his eyes open slightly wider. “What do you mean?”

“I mean this dirty boy needs a bath, and Grimmjow is going to give it to you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just...............a whole lot of dicks and questionable content this chapter 💦 
> 
> re grimmjow being highlander: he doesn't know about luppi and co being on the mayuri zombie bandwagon because anything after yhwach's defeat has been stricken from the record of all my fics forever and ever amen


	5. Chapter 5

Ichigo thought he was pretty fast, but Yoruichi was faster.

Seeing him about to transform back to his shinigami form, she punched him right in his furry cat face and grabbed him painfully by his scruff, dispelling the masking kidou and legging it into the living room before he could get his bearings.

“I found a dead cat outside,” Yoruichi announced, holding his saturated little body aloft. “It jumped in the window while Ichigo was leaving and ruined all my sake.” Still seeing stars, his nose stinging from the impact, Ichigo could do nothing but hang there like a wet rag and make a mournful meow deep in his throat. Fucking thwarted.

For an instant, dead silence filled the room. Grimmjow glanced up, saw him, then drilled his gaze into the table.

“Yoruichi-sama,” Kon whispered reverently, face pink and his eyes as big as dinner plates. Right, Yoruichi was still naked. “Wh—did you say Ichigo went home? Without me?” His eyes were suspicious as he stared at Ichigo’s sadly hanging body. Kon had never seen his cat form, but he wasn’t a total idiot.

“Ichigo got what he came for,” she said casually. “I don’t think he was having a very good night before I showed up.” For some reason Grimmjow’s brows twitched into a horrible frown as he glared at the table. Like he gave a shit, Ichigo thought unkindly. “What’s this dead cat spirit doing hanging around the shop?”

“That’s King, and he’s family now,” Urahara said, his fan snapping open to hide what was probably a shit-eating grin. “I thought about performing konsou on it but to be honest, I like being surrounded by handsome cats. Don’t you agree, Grimmjow?”

“Don’t give a shit either way,” Grimmjow muttered, picking at the edge of the lacquered wooden table. “Cat fucking reeks though. Throw it outside.”

Oh, right. Grimmjow didn’t like anyone knowing he liked King. What a dick.

“You throw it,” Yoruichi replied, and launched him straight at Grimmjow’s head. Ichigo heart gave a hard thump of fright, seeing only Grimmjow’s startled blue eyes for the single instant it took to cross the distance. His claws flew out instinctively, and Ichigo hoped to god he didn’t duck. Kon—and by extension, Ichigo’s body—was right behind him in scratching range.

But two strong hands caught him under his chest and belly, holding him aloft in front of Grimmjow’s tense, scowling face. His eyes were narrowed until only a flash of blue was visible. It was sort of washed out to Ichigo’s vision, faded. The estigma around his eyes wasn’t as vivid.

“Thought you’d gone into the light,” Grimmjow said after a moment. He sniffed Ichigo’s face. “Fuck, you stink.” Ichigo could only chirp a small, sad noise of agreement.

“Yeah, the sake will kill him twice if he cleans it off himself,” Yoruichi said, waving as she disappeared down the hall, probably to procure some pants. “Someone should give him a bath.”

“Well, I’m not doing it,” Kon said. “I don’t even live here, and that cat looks like an asshole.” Okay, he definitely knew it was Ichigo. “Whoever is touching the cat has to bathe it!”

“Agreed,” Urahara said, which meant that Tessai immediately followed with a taciturn nod. “Otherwise our beloved feline spirit friend might pass sadly out of existence from alcohol poisoning! Grimmjow, have a heart.”

“I’m a hollow, you dumb shit, the whole point is—”

Whatever he might have said was cut off when Ichigo bit him on the wrist as hard as he could. Whatever part of Yoruichi’s sick brain thought making Grimmjow submerge him in water counted as helping, Ichigo wanted nothing to do with it. The instant Grimmjow’s grip loosened in surprise, Ichigo leapt with all his sodden ginger might.

Hands caught him again instantly, and it wasn’t even a surprise. Ichigo let out a mournful yowl from the depths of his temporary cat soul as he was tugged back into the bend of a strong, pale-skinned arm, unmarked by any true sun.

“Easy there, asshole.” Tucked in the crook of a warm elbow, Ichigo felt a small, almost imperceptible squeeze of comfort. A moment later, Grimmjow seemed to realise he now had sake and ginger fur all over his jumpsuit and swore colourfully. “Fine. Fucking bath it is. Anything’s gotta be more interesting than listening to you dipshits wax poetic about Kurosaki all night.”

“But he’s so dreamy,” Kon said offhandedly, looking Ichigo dead in the eye. “And by extension, so am I.”

“He has a very appealing and straightforward manner,” Tessai added from behind a full dish of sake. “And he compliments my cooking, unlike the rest of the blow-in vagrants we give rooms to.” There was no mistaking who he was referring to, and Ichigo clearly remembered the cucumber sandwich thing a few days ago. Grimmjow snorted rudely and packed Ichigo tightly under his arm, unfolding to his full height. The ground suddenly looked very far away.

“Whatever, I’m heading to the laundry.” Despite Ichigo’s best attempts to bite him again, he couldn’t quite reach. Horrified, he watched as Grimmjow made good on his announcement and stepped out into the hallway. “Someone get me some shit to wash this little fucker with.”

Urahara perked straight up. “Oh! Of course, I have an array of gentle soaps and combs from Yoruichi-san’s special collection.” Dropping his fan, he flash-stepped clear out of the room to bring what was no doubt going to be an appalling amount of product and equipment.

Urahara was pretty quick to help with that part of the damn proceedings, Ichigo thought with prejudice as he was carried into the laundry and shoved into the deep, cold well of the sink. Trying to jump and run was futile with Grimmjow’s sonido, but it felt like surrendering if he didn’t at least put up a fight. Flattening his ears, feeling his pupils bloom to round black voids, Ichigo hissed with the full force of his little cat throat and leapt out with claws extended.

“Shit—” Grimmjow dropped what looked like a container of washing powder and grabbed him again, grimacing as his fingers sank into the wet tangles of alcohol-soaked fur. “If you don’t fuckin’ stop it I’m gonna knock your ass out and wash you while you’re sleeping. I don’t know how to wash a fucking cat, so you might drown. You want that? Huh?”

Ichigo mewled plaintively and went limp. No, he did not want that. Mollified slightly, Grimmjow’s ferocious expression relaxed a little. Without ceremony or any particular gentleness, Ichigo was dumped back in the sink.

He didn’t want any part of the whole thing, but transforming back and giving up his secret identity felt like both a stupid and suicidal move. On the one hand, Grimmjow would probably kill him for it. On the other, he’d transform back naked and embarrassed, and Ichigo had given up enough of his pride for that asshole. So he’d put up with the stupid bath and pray the entire thing was over and done with soon. Hell, maybe if he helped a little by dunking himself in the water it’d speed the whole process up.

Ichigo was thinking so frantically of ways to minimise the horror of it all that at first all he did was push up into the hand that was stroking over his sticky, wet, reeking head. He smelled really, really bad. God, it was bad, and—Grimmjow was petting him. A long-fingered, calloused hand was running over the top of his head from his spiky little eyebrow whiskers, over between his ears and down to his neck. The twist in his expression said it didn’t feel good at all, but he kept it up until Ichigo unfolded slightly from his fearful slump in the corner of the metal tub.

“Not such a badass now, huh,” Grimmjow said reluctantly, picking him up carefully and holding him up against his chest. Ichigo didn’t need to look to see the plug being shoved into the drain; the rush of warm water hitting metal that followed it said everything. Twenty years old, being bathed by his self-proclaimed future killer in a cold laundry sink with cat shampoo and a worn towel to dry him off. The indignity. The injustice.

Grimmjow’s fingers found the sweet spot in front of his ear and started rubbing it, and Ichigo forgot a lot of his complaints for a while, instead blissfully resting his furry cheek on the scarred skin above the zipper of Grimmjow’s catsuit. He really knew the good spots to scratch.

By the time the sink was filled enough, Ichigo was as limp and pliable as warm clay. He didn’t even fuss when he was slowly lowered into the water, which was probably a little bit deep for a cat having a bath, but it was almost hot and it immediately dampened the stink of the alcohol in his fur. Brightening a little as the sting in his nose lessened slightly, Ichigo squinted up at Grimmjow, who was looking down at him with the daunted eyes of someone who had no idea what the fuck he was doing.

“All right, we’re gonna do this, and we’re not gonna fuck it up.” Grimmjow didn’t look convinced of his own words. Ichigo wasn’t sure if the pep talk was to himself or both of them, but he agreed anyway with a short, encouraging _mow!_  that he hoped got his point across. He felt like he weighed about a ton with all the water in his long fur, so escaping would only embarrass them both. Ichigo was in for the long haul.

Grimmjow exhaled a small breath and reached for the shampoo.

At the first touch of soap-covered hands sinking into his waterlogged fur, Ichigo jerked like he’d been touched with live electricity. But he didn’t bite, and that was the important thing. Grimmjow just smoothed the shampoo all the way down his fur and then pushed the entire pelt of it up, sending his fur out in every direction like an orange hedgehog. It felt…kinda good. Taking his lack of reaction as permission to get on with it, Grimmjow’s expression relaxed a little.

“Yeah, let’s get this shit off you.”

And he did, but not right away. First he massaged all the shampoo into his fur, all the way down to Ichigo’s skin. He went over the top of his head, around his ears, even got his soft cheeks and chin where the sake hadn’t hit him. When hands dipped into the water and went under his belly, Ichigo’s eyes almost rolled back in his head. Sure, it was weird, but…damn, when he pushed his fur in the other direction and then smoothed it all back down after it was clean? He felt like a slick otter, a sleek shark, a marine triumph—

Fingers pushed the fur on the top of his head in two directions, and Ichigo knew instinctively that Grimmjow had just given him a tiny mohawk.

“Kinda skinny without all the orange sticking out.” Strong palms ran down his back, one over the other, pushing water out of his fur. It left him feeling exposed and small, and he hated that Grimmjow noticed. But the eyes that ran over him weren’t judging, or mocking. If anything, he looked a little bit subdued. “When I threw that cero you were supposed to fuck off and not come back. You stupid or something?”

What was he supposed to do, answer? He blinked up at Grimmjow over the sagging wet lengths of his cheek fur, which he was pretty sure looked like a sad moustache by that point. The face that looked back reflected an expression he couldn’t ever remember seeing on Grimmjow. Regret, maybe.

When hands reached down and plucked him out of the sink, water streaming off his legs and tail, Ichigo thought he was going to be deposited on the towel for drying. Instead, Grimmjow tucked the entire wet weight of him against his chest, ignoring the cascade of soapy water that ruined his clothes. Startled, Ichigo let out a weird throaty chirp before he could restrain it, and felt the soft underside of a warm jaw butt down on the top of his wet head. The arms around him were careful and as secure as any cradle.

“Not used to anything coming back for seconds,” Grimmjow said, tilting his head down until his cheek was pressed to Ichigo’s folded ear. “Guess that means I gotta look after you now.”

Ichigo was stunned.

Warm. Protected. Cared for. Things he rarely let himself feel on his best days, human or shinigami. Certainly never when Grimmjow had been around. But he wasn’t Ichigo then, was he? He was King, the ginger spirit cat who came back even after being scared half to death. Maybe he was stupid, and maybe it was all going to blow up in his face one day, but just then Ichigo would have given anything to just be able to rest like that a few minutes longer, like someone that Grimmjow trusted enough to let his guard down around. Someone he liked. He could go back to being a reliable, unaffected shinigami later. There would always be time for that.

By the time Grimmjow let out a breath and deposited him on the laundry bench and threw a towel over him, Ichigo was almost lulled into complete obedience as he had water squeezed and rubbed out of his fur. The sad toilet brush of his tail was being all but wrung out when Urahara slid open the door and held up an array of toothed combs like kunai. In his other hand was a small zipped bag, the kind Karin stored her toiletries in.

“I found some better combs. My my, he does look bedraggled. Poor thing.” Urahara got a good look at Grimmjow. “Did you get in with him? You’re soaked. More importantly, my floor is soaked.” Setting the stuff down on the bench beside him, Urahara reached into the tall cupboard for the mop and started cleaning around them. It made the close quarters even closer. Grimmjow’s expression darkened.

“You gotta do that now?”

“Well, I want to get stunningly drunk off Tessai’s moonshine later. Best to do this mostly sober, so no skulls crack on the floor when we all inevitably forget about the water. Keep drying him! He’s probably cold.”

The water left in his fur was making him kinda chilly, especially when he didn’t have any body heat to press up against anymore. Trilling quietly to bring his attention back, Ichigo tried to look pathetic and sad. It was pretty fucking easy, and he stayed mad about it as the towel came back to cover him. For a long moment there was just the rasping of the towel moving over his sides and belly, and Urahara quietly swishing the mop over the tiled floor.

“I think I might stop inviting Kurosaki-san to our drinking nights when you’re here.”

The hands around him froze. Head mostly obscured by the towel, Ichigo blinked in surprise.

“Separating the rabid animal from the civilised shinigami?” Grimmjow sneered. “Didn’t take long.”

“Actually, I was thinking of both of you. I never see you quite so angry as when Kurosaki-san is under our roof, and Kurosaki-san seems…unhappy, around you. I admit I had hopes you two would bury the hatchet when I saw you working together on the power core, but I suspect now it was a freak anomaly. Wouldn’t you enjoy yourself more if he wasn’t in attendance?” Humming quietly, Urahara continued swirling the mop around the floor. Ichigo pushed his face out from the towel so he could see better. Above him, Grimmjow pulled the towel off and unzipped the little bag, pulling out a tiny travel hairdryer. It baffled him for a moment, until he saw the plug at the end and inserted it into the point on the wall. The low whir of gentle warm air it emitted felt like heaven on his cold body when it was pointed at him.

“It’s your house, isn’t it?” The dryer moved down the length of Ichigo’s spine with careful precision. “Do whatever you want.”

“That’s no answer. Would it relieve you to not see Kurosaki-san anymore?”

“We don’t need separating like a couple of fuckin’ kids, Kisuke. I can avoid him all on my own.”

“And yet, you don’t.” Urahara flipped the mop up over the sink and wrung it out. The handle almost hit Grimmjow in the head, but he shouldered it out of the way in time. “You seem to enjoy antagonising him to the point of forcing him to avoid us all. With that in mind, I’m offering to arrange things so you no longer have to act on that instinct.” Hanging the mop back in the cupboard, Urahara shifted around Grimmjow and picked up the widest comb. He began to work on Ichigo’s tail in careful, short strokes, making sure not to tug on any knots. “What is it you dislike about Kurosaki-san so much?”

Oh, shit. Ichigo didn’t know whether to kiss Urahara or claw his face off. Interfering, scheming asshole! Ears perking straight up with great interest, he stared up at Grimmjow guiltily. He shouldn’t be hearing this. Urahara wanted him to hear it. Fuck. He should run. Damn it, he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. If there was even a small chance Grimmjow might be honest, even if it was just a crumb of insight—

“Everything,” Grimmjow said flatly, and all of Ichigo’s hopes crashed into the floor. He stood in stunned dismay as the hairdryer moved from his back to his sides. Grimmjow’s mouth flattened. For a split second, Ichigo thought his eyes flickered. “Nothing. I don’t fuckin’ know. He hates me, so I hate him. End of story.”

What.

Ichigo actually had his mouth halfway open to argue when Urahara ‘accidentally’ jabbed him in the balls with the comb. Yowling, he swung around and swiped hard at the hand holding it to no avail. Without his hat on Urahara looked like a slightly dishevelled but pleasant uncle. His smile was beatific as he dodged a few swipes with zero effort, then had the gall to stroke him under the chin. Grimmjow absently slapped his hand away, then tugged his fingertips down Ichigo’s fur, testing its dryness.

“By your logic, were Kurosaki-san to extend the hand of friendship, it sounds like you would reach back.”

Grimmjow’s snort was sharp. “You know what he said last time we weren’t at each other’s throats? Said I was mean. All the time, mean. So I figured, he helped out with the power core so I’d show him I could be something else. Talked to that mod soul of his, made it like me—”

“Him,” Urahara interjected politely.

“Him, whatever. I proved to Kurosaki I could fake it just as well as any other fucker out there.” Grimmjow’s hand was squeezing down on Ichigo’s back too hard. The hairdryer clicked off with a whine. “He just stared through me like I was trash. So fuck him.” From Ichigo’s angle, he saw the expression on the face staring down at him and quietly reeled. “Yeah, why don’t you just make it so we don’t cross paths.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. That wasn’t what—that wasn’t even what had happened! It wasn’t Ichigo’s fault that Grimmjow was too stupid to catch a clue! Why the hell would anyone care about whether or not he could be nice to other people?! Hell with other people! Slinking out from under Grimmjow’s hand, mad as shit, he avoided the next grab and launched off the bench through the gap between them. He didn’t have to stand there and listen to the stupid misguided bullshit coming out of that asshole. He’d never looked at anyone like they were trash. That was such a fucking Ulquiorra thing to say.

“Ho ho! I think King is sick of us not paying him due attention,” Urahara said pleasantly, holding Ichigo in a really uncomfortable grapple where he’d caught him in mid-air. “If he keeps running away, I might just use hadou to ensure he never walks again.” The glint in his eye said the words were clearly meant for Ichigo as a person, and not King the fluffy, soap-scented ginger cat. He was almost relieved when Grimmjow lifted him out of the badly-placed grip.

“You ever touch King with your shinigami bullshit and I’ll slit your throat in your sleep.”

“How harsh!”

“I mean it,” Grimmjow said flatly. The hands that held Ichigo up were firm and careful, right up until he placed him gently on the bench again. “Anyone touches this cat outside of food or petting and I will bite their fuckin’ eyeballs out of their sockets. That means no konsou either. He’s mine now.”

Urahara blinked at them both. “How protective you are over something that shows you even the slightest hint of affection, Grimmjow,” he said slowly. The glance that hit Ichigo did so with the weight of an avalanche. “Almost like you’ve rarely _experienced_ any, and hardly _know_ it when you _see_ it.”

Grimmjow looked up from where he was rubbing both of Ichigo’s ears at the same time. “Why the fuck are you talking like that?”

“Finish drying the cat,” Urahara sighed, “and then come and get splendidly black-out drunk with us and brood about the Kurosaki-shaped hole in your life. I honestly lack the patience for anything more tonight.”

“You’re the one who came in asking all this shit. Don’t blame me if you don’t like what you hear.”

“There’s a nourishing vanilla-scented cat conditioner in the bag with the hairdryer,” Urahara said as he walked out, damning Ichigo to hell in a single sentence. “Spray King liberally with it and he’ll be as soft as a cloud.” The door slid shut behind him with a flat magnetic click.

It took Grimmjow less than a moment to curiously fish out the little spray bottle of conditioner and uncap it, sniffing the nozzle warily. His eyebrows shot up a little.

“Not bad.” He held it out to Ichigo, who sniffed it as well—and sneezed. Right, cat noses didn’t need deep inhales. Short puffs of air were the go. It didn’t smell bad though; just kind of sweet and mild, like cotton candy or marshmallow. He was mentally readying himself to smell like a dessert when Grimmjow tilted his head in thought.

That was when Ichigo had the singular honour of seeing Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez spritz his own hair with vanilla cat conditioner, experimentally combing it through the rumpled mess of blue with his fingers.

“It’s not that bad. Doesn’t burn or anything.” Settling a hand over Ichigo’s confounded face, Grimmjow sprayed him all over in a few short bursts of damp, sweet scent and stroked it into his now-dry fur. “Now we smell the same. If you were a hollow, it’d mean you’re part of my fracción. We used to all sleep back to back in a big pile, gettin’ our scents all mixed up into a blur, keeping eyes out in all directions. Stayed alive that way. For a while.” A lean hand settled on his head, vanilla-scented and warm. “You’re not big enough to watch my back, but I can watch yours.”

Ichigo didn’t really remember or know Grimmjow’s fracción, other than they’d been some of the first to attack the deployed shinigami in Karakura. He’d always thought they were just disposable soldiers; front line fodder discarded by Aizen with no thought whatsoever. It sounded like they’d been something else to Grimmjow, and he’d never replaced them.

Reluctantly sad, a little humbled, Ichigo tried for a decent purr while the conditioner was combed through his fur the rest of the way. He wasn’t very good at it, but he figured volume over cadence was just as nice.

“You sound like shit,” Grimmjow said later, packing everything away and pulling the plug on the sink. There was a crooked smile in the corner of his mouth. “C’mon, get out of here. I gotta go shower and change. Cleaning you made me fuckin’ filthy.” He tugged the door open, finally giving Ichigo the freedom he’d been after the entire time.

Standing on the bench, dry and warm and smelling like vanilla and whipped cream and all sorts of tasty things, Ichigo stared at the doorway, then at Grimmjow.

Never known affection, he thought, taking Urahara’s point for what it was. Well, damn.

Shuffling himself to the edge of the bench, Ichigo wiggled his haunches down a little, eyes on his prize.

“Damn it—” Grimmjow clamped his hands around Ichigo the moment he hit his chest, who landed trustingly and with no idea how he was going to stay up there otherwise. Butting his head against Grimmjow’s unmasked cheek, his jaw, his neck, smearing his wet little cat nose all over his skin, badly purring like a faulty engine, Ichigo did his best to do what an affectionate cat might. After a small hesitation, Grimmjow wrapped not just his hands but both arms around the clean and fluffy bundle his body made, shoving his nose into the fur of his shoulder.

Okay, so maybe they’d both fucked up out there in the living room, Ichigo thought as he aimlessly groomed Grimmjow’s hairline with his spiny tongue, tail flicking with thought. Maybe Ichigo hadn’t given him enough of a chance. Maybe Grimmjow hadn’t even understood what the hell he’d wanted in the first place. They could fix that, but not if Urahara stopped inviting him. Not unless he started inviting himself.

Problems for another day, he decided finally, feeling Grimmjow sigh into his fur and start carrying him out to the hall and up the stairs, heading presumably for the bathroom where—oh, wait.

Shower?

Grimmjow was going to take him into the bathroom while he showered?

Naked?

Ichigo stared blankly over his shoulder as the bottom of the staircase retreated a little with each step.

Well, so much for foresight.

This was gonna be weird.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> timely reminder that ichigo isn't a real cat, and none of the rough treatment in this story should ever be repeated on an actual cat 😾
> 
> with that aside: ayyyyyy, naked grimmjow next chapter 🤙
> 
> edit: [trevo has made the most beautiful catchigo and grimmjow art for this chapter!!](https://trevoshere.tumblr.com/post/182510949593/for-murderlight-and-her-gorgeous-story-cat) do yourself a favour and click the link--then tell her how amazing she is 😭❤


	6. Chapter 6

Since learning the secret to transforming into a large, domestic ginger cat, Ichigo had experienced the indignity of having myriad personal boundaries stomped on without a care. Usually by Urahara, who seemed to have a fixation on touching his furry cat balls when he wasn’t outright trying to rub his ears in the bathroom he’d gone to jerk off in.

Knowing that was his last real memory of being in that bathroom wasn’t helping matters, Ichigo thought desperately, staring into the basin with a fixed, unblinking gaze. Naked in the bathroom with no dignity, that was last time.

This time, Ichigo was sitting on the bathroom vanity where Grimmjow had deposited him, trying with all his fluffy might not to look up as he heard the long rasp of a zipper being dragged all the way down.

He didn’t want to see Grimmjow naked. He didn’t want to see Grimmjow naked. He didn’t want—

A hand descended onto Ichigo’s head, petting him in a way that was mostly just the stroke of a thumb while the rest of his fingers cupped the back of his skull. Then the hand disappeared to tug the wet jumpsuit the rest of the way off. Ichigo’s mournful eyes could only see naked calves as Grimmjow stepped out of the legs of it, and even that felt like too much bare skin. He’d never seen Grimmjow’s naked legs in his life.

“What’re you all fluffed up about?” Grimmjow asked, his voice a rumbling echo in the humid bathroom. The hiss of hot water pouring through the shower-head did nothing to mask the amusement in his words. “Relax, you’re not gettin’ another bath. This one’s for me. You shed like a motherfucker, by the way.” A single digit bopped him on the top of his nose where the smooth tip gave way to velvety fur, and then it was gone. The shower door opened with a creak and a huge billow of steam hit Ichigo in the side. It shut with a clack, signalling to him it was finally okay to look up. There was nothing but a skin-coloured smear of tall nakedness through the fogged-up glass, thank god. He was finally safe from accidentally becoming every bit the pervert Urahara was. All it took was some consideration and a little bit of strategic positioning—

The door creaked open again and Grimmjow jumped out, dick swinging and water droplets spraying off every inch of his skin. Ichigo’s tiny jaw fell open.

“Where’s my fucking loofah?” Grimmjow bitched, wet hair hanging over his face and down one side of his cheek. Leaning over so closely that Ichigo’s whiskers brushed his upper thigh, he started pulling open the mirrored cabinet over the sink. Ichigo stared through time, wondering how the hell he was going to ever act normal around him again. Arrancar dick, unsettlingly long and right in his furry face. Every single bright blue pube was burned into his slimy third eyelid forever. God damn it. For a fucking loofah! Couldn’t he have just used his hand?!

The worst part was, Grimmjow didn’t think he needed to bother covering up, and Ichigo couldn’t jump away in horror like he wanted to for fear of giving himself away. Cats were unconcerned by naked people, weren’t they? Cats didn’t get embarrassed. Ichigo was fucking embarrassed. He hadn’t been in enough full-frontal locker room scenarios for this to be brushed off. So he sat there upright, silent and unmoving as a stone statue with a dick in its face, and prayed Grimmjow found his fucking shower accessory quickly.

He didn’t. The mirrored cabinet wasn’t even big but Grimmjow grunted to himself with interest and pulled down a small bottle of probably-conditioner that smelled like Tessai. The speculative look on Grimmjow’s face as he squinted at the label said he was thinking of using it. Ichigo hissed before he could restrain himself. Grimmjow, smelling like Tessai? Gross.

“What, you don’t like it? Shit’s expensive.” Grimmjow sniffed the cap and wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, maybe you got a point. Smells like waxy ass.” He tossed it back in the cabinet with a clatter and slammed the door shut. Grabbing for the washcloth on the vanity, he exhaled in frustration and looked at it with annoyed blue eyes. “Loofah’s the best thing to clean my hole with. This fucking thing is like flossing my guts.” Like he was absolutely sure King could understand him, Grimmjow pointed at his hollow hole for emphasis.

It was probably the closest Ichigo had ever been to a real hollow hole, apart from his own. He figured it didn’t count since he’d been mostly out of his mind at the time. Blinking at it, and very definitely not letting his eyes slide down to the smear of blue in his peripheral vision, Ichigo thought, _what the hell_ and batted at the edge of it with his paw.

The worst thing that happened was he got his paw wet from touching Grimmjow’s skin. It was just a hole, really. Looking up at Grimmjow, who was frowning curiously back down at him, Ichigo wondered how far he could push his luck. Something told him it was pretty fucking far, now that he’d been officially inducted into whatever Grimmjow considered his inner circle. And speaking of an inner circle…

Feeling risky and amused by the whole situation, Ichigo took advantage and pushed his whole head into Grimmjow’s hollow hole. His whiskers pressed flat to his cheeks uncomfortably and his ears folded down some, but he managed to put his entire head inside without any trouble at all.

“Holy fuck,” Grimmjow announced in disgust, scrabbling at his fluffy shoulders and trying to tug him out. “Get the fuck out!”

There were a lot of muted squealing, whooshy sounds coming from the inner curve of the hole, Ichigo realised, listening with fascination. Digestion? Blood gushing around his organs? It was like listening to a seashell at the beach, only it was the sound of an arrancar’s body. And they liked to talk about how dead they were. Grimmjow felt the furthest thing from dead. Squinting his eyes shut in the warm cavity, trying to listen even harder, Ichigo wondered if he could find his heartbeat inside all of those other strange, living sounds.

“You sick bastard,” Grimmjow muttered, finally getting a decent hold on him and pulling Ichigo backwards out of his hole in a way that didn’t yank his neck. “Stay outta there, you little pervert.”

Face damp, feeling mischievous, Ichigo decided to daringly bite him on the forearm before he could pull away. But as sharp and white as his little fangs were, they couldn’t bite through hierro any more than he could bite through true metal. But there was some satisfying give to his skin, even though it stopped almost immediately. Grimmjow just grunted in more surprise than pain, jiggling his arm experimentally to make Ichigo’s head nod against his will. When nothing else happened Ichigo unlatched his bite, a bit disappointed in the complete lack of damage. Grimmjow just gave him a firm scruff on the top of his head and disappeared back into the shower without another word, washcloth in hand.

Well. That was demoralising. Feeling a little bit overlooked, Ichigo lashed his tail and thought about things like hollow holes and naked arrancar. Naked Grimmjow, specifically. The already hot and humid bathroom felt a little warmer as he realised that he, Kurosaki Ichigo, had just done about five things he could never have gotten away with as himself. Things he wouldn’t have even thought about doing. Was being a cat for so long starting to give him strange impulses, or was it just the freedom of the form allowing him to do whatever he liked?

Or was it knowing—really, truly knowing—that Grimmjow wasn’t going to hurt him, no matter what he did or what boundaries he pushed?

Blinking through the white steam that was filling the bathroom, watching the smudgy outline of Grimmjow casually washing himself down, Ichigo wondered if he wasn’t jealous of King. Kurosaki Ichigo would never receive the kind of trust or affection that he reserved for the fluffy ginger cat he defended so fiercely. Grimmjow hated him. Thought he hated him.

Well, Ichigo thought, bundling himself down next to the sink, at least he had a little bit of hope that things could be better than they were. He wasn’t afraid of a little hard work, either. Urahara had given him a roadmap of what to work on, in his weirdly helpful but mostly manipulative way. Yoruichi was even on his side.

Besides, the night was still young. What else might he discover before the evening was through?

Purring quietly to himself, Ichigo shut his eyes and lowered his head.

As long as it didn’t contain any more blue ballsack flying at his face, the night could only improve from there.

 

* * *

 

“Well, I’m not saying Ichigo has a carpet python in his pants, or even something remotely that impressive,” Kon was saying, slinging an arm across Urahara’s shoulders, sipping from the full dish in his other hand, “but it’s all in the execution, isn’t it? The dick is only as big as its wielder, blah blah blah it’s how you use it. I wouldn’t personally know, because if he trusted me any less he’d lock it in a cock cage. Did you know those were a thing? Plastic cages so your untrustworthy significant other can’t fuck without the other’s say-so. Seems inhumane.”

Yoruichi sniffed dismissively. “Even puppies need to be trained where to piss.”

“I’m not talking about piss,” Kon said emphatically. “I’m talking about sex!”

Yoruichi just shrugged, leaning back down on one elbow so her top gaped open to the bottom of her ribs.

“Sometimes it’s one and the same, little lion man.”

Glances were exchanged around the table. Kon’s eyes rounded to dinner-plate proportions. Safely ensconced in Grimmjow’s warm lap, Ichigo was trying not to die on the spot.

They’d been talking about dicks and reputations for the last ten minutes at least. It had all seemed like fun and games after the horrors of the shower scene, to the point that Ichigo had been fine being safely carried under his belly and ribs by a warm, soap-smelling Grimmjow wearing a new black catsuit, sleeveless and clean, his damp hair hanging relaxed over his brow. After all that, sitting as a cat watching the others get drunk should have been a reward, not a punishment.

Then, because Yoruichi was a harpy and a shit-stirring menace, the conversation topic had turned to _‘Never Have I Ever’_ and assorted drinking game confessions. Never have I ever seen Ichigo’s dick, she’d said with her flashing white grin, taking a massive gulp of her own sake. He was pretty sure the idea was to say something you hadn’t done and watch everyone else drink, but no. Yoruichi, Kon and Urahara all drank deep while Tessai and Grimmjow stared rigidly at the table. The spindly, inhumanly strong fingers that had been stroking Ichigo’s back were almost digging into his dry-spaghetti spine. Well, it wasn’t his fault they were talking about dicks! Kon was going to get his ass beat when they debriefed at home next.

“I’d say Ichigo knows what to do with his body far better than most other human males I’ve encountered,” Yoruichi said with an exaggerated wink he knew was only for him. “He’s really in touch with his pulse and skin, alive with it in a way I’ve never connected with—Grimmjow, am I boring you? Should we talk about something else?”

Grimmjow, already three gulps down the shinigami moonshine tokkuri, looked like he’d rather die than hear another thing about Kurosaki Ichigo and how good he was. He slammed the jug down on the table and snorted.

“Do your worst,” he said wolfishly, but it sounded just a little off. The hand that ran down Ichigo’s back was almost too heavy. “I just think if we’re trading sex stories, you should be going ‘round the table.” Blue eyes switched to Kon’s dumbfounded face, his cheeks already high with colour. “What about you, mod soul? You fucked Kurosaki too?”

“Me?” Kon squeaked, shifting back into Urahara’s armpit. “No! Ichigo would never allow that!”

Trying to parse that as quickly as possible, Ichigo came up with the conclusion to that at the same time Grimmjow did.

“So you’d let him fuck you, huh? In his own body?” Grabbing the tokkuri again, Grimmjow slid out another serve of alcohol into his sake dish. “Kinky.”

“No,” Kon said, strangely earnest for all the alcohol in his system. “Ichigo and I are brothers. I’d die for him. Just because we share a dick doesn’t mean anything—dirty. He’s the only family I’ll ever have. He has my back.”

Blinking a couple of times in the startled silence, Yoruichi came up on her elbows to look at Kon. So did everyone else. Embarrassed, pink in the face, ears and chest, Kon tapped at the rim of his sake dish with his fingernails and tried not to look at the flustered ginger cat in Grimmjow’s lap.

Ichigo felt nice and warm. Kon’s admissions weren’t anything new or shocking—they’d talked about it all before. A year before. Kon was as familiar to him as his own hand, his own body, his own face. But to hear it amongst people Kon had never spoken that truth to, it was….nice, to hear him say it.

Grimmjow just scoffed, shoving aside his empty dish to slug straight from the tokkuri. His swallowing exhale was almost flammable for its fume.

“You think he hasn’t made promises like that to every other fucker he’s come across?” Grimmjow snorted rudely. “But when it comes down to living up to them, he’s busy fighting quincies and chasing human baggage. Human lives.” Another gulp, burning and strong. Grimmjow’s hand wavered a little as he lowered the jug, but it found its home. The eyes Ichigo looked up to were hard and cold. “Let me give you a piece of advice, mod soul. Never need someone more than they need you. Not if you want to survive.”

The silence that fell was pervasive. Even Yoruichi sat up properly, tugging her neckline into place, her steady golden eyes levelled across the table. Grimmjow just continued drinking like it was nothing at all. Like he hadn’t even said anything.

“Ah, the old Hueco Mundo wisdom,” Urahara said into the jarring silence, his tone offensively light. “Are you implying that you needed Kurosaki Ichigo and were disappointed—”

“Stop fucking asking, Urahara Kisuke,” Grimmjow said acidly. The hand across Ichigo’s back wasn’t rough anymore, but sliding down his head and spine like a cart on unsteady rails. “If you want your foothold in Las Noches one day. Don’t fucking think I don’t know what you’re using me for, helping me fix these power cores.”

Ichigo, squirming under the weight of a too-heavy hand, grew still and startled. What could Urahara get from Las Noches by helping? It was still a massive refugee camp for what Soul Society considered to be monsters. Nobody upstairs would care about them. Was that why Grimmjow had accepted Urahara’s help with restoring it?

And then his talk about trust, or not trusting…

Whipping his head about, Ichigo stared up at Urahara’s blinking gaze, right around where Kon was drunkenly leaning on him. If he was using Grimmjow and all his frustrated determination to do everything right, just so Las Noches could have power…

Grey eyes slid from Grimmjow’s face to Ichigo’s slanted glare in the cradle of his lap and crinkled kindly.

“The power cores are yours to repair, Grimmjow, so that you don’t feel you’re receiving handouts from anything related to Soul Society. I know you don’t trust me as a former captain, and I don’t expect you to! But please, don’t align my aid with the expectation of repayment. Forgive the insult, but you don’t have anything I want. Now, isn’t that a wonderful comfort?”

Grimmjow didn’t say anything, but his hackles seemed to lower a little. Glancing down at Ichigo, he seemed to realise he was gripping him too hard and pulled his hand away sharply with a muttered curse. Feeling a little like he should look after himself for a short time, Ichigo hopped out of the formerly safe cradle and padded over to Kon, who still looked embarrassed by his declaration of undying love and loyalty. Ducking Urahara’s reaching hand, Ichigo stepped up onto Kon’s thighs and butted his head against his chest. He was allowed to be affectionate in this form, wasn’t he? It was just cat stuff.

“Two ginger boys sitting in mutual appreciation,” Urahara said as Kon hesitantly petted Ichigo’s head with an inexperienced hand. “How adorable! Whose turn is it to ask questions? Mine?” Refilling his sake dish, Urahara raised it like he was about to make a toast. “Never have I ever thought about having sex with Kurosaki Ichigo.” And then he drank.

So did everyone at the table.

Including Grimmjow.

Yoruichi was grinning like an idiot as she wiped her mouth. Tessai just shrugged at Urahara, who shrugged right back. Kon was as red as a tomato, stammering about how it was natural curiosity. And Grimmjow—he was pouring again.

“Were you playing the game or are you just drinking indiscriminately?” Yoruichi asked him suspiciously, watching him toss back another long gulp.

“Yeah,” Grimmjow replied, sounding like the alcohol was beginning to hit him at last. Ichigo stared with eyes he knew had blown wide with round, black interest. “Why is tonight all about fuckin’ obsessing over Kurosaki? Finally run out of shitty war stories?” When Yoruichi just smiled at him, his scowl deepened. “What?”

“Why did you delay returning to Hueco Mundo? Wasn’t it so you could spend some time with Ichigo?”

If there was a single bold-faced question that could shut Grimmjow down any harder, Ichigo couldn’t think of it. Darting away from Kon and back into Grimmjow’s lap where his legs were folded, he watched closely under the guise of accepting automatic chin rubs. Blinking down at him, cheeks slightly pinked with alcohol, Grimmjow jerked a quick shrug and didn’t reply.

“Ichigo is a good dude,” Kon said, seemingly at random, “and I’m pretty sure there isn’t a single person he’s ever fought or become friends with that hasn’t had a crush on him.”

Yoruichi screwed up her nose. “Even Yamamoto?”

Urahara choked a little. “Especially Yamamoto. The listening device I put in his office once captured the strangest conversation about caning Kurosaki-san’s buttocks until they were bright red. I think he had a corporal punishment fetish.” Ichigo wondered if he could vomit without it being a tip-off.

“Kurotsuchi Mayuri?” Tessai asked thoughtfully. “What about him?”

“Once explicitly said he’d like to put his erect member in a pile of Kurosaki-san’s discarded and still-steaming entrails, post-experiment.” Urahara shook his head. “I’d like to say that was the worst fantasy my devices have picked up, but Unohana Retsu was a complicated woman of dark appetites. May she rest in peace.”

“Pour one out for the kinky doctor,” Kon said solemnly. They all drank in a respectful silence, though Grimmjow looked like he’d eaten something nasty.

As interesting as it was to know Seireitei was full of horrifying perverts who’d thought about spanking him and fucking his internal organs, Ichigo couldn’t really say he was too surprised. That place was messed up, and the people that ran it were even more so.

“Nelliel once said she wished she could lactate so she could hose Kurosaki in it,” Grimmjow said suddenly, and Ichigo’s entire fucking world collapsed around him. Flipping onto his back in appalled defeat, he didn’t even revel in it as a palm lowered to gently stroke the soft fur of his exposed belly. He wanted to cover his face with his paws and cry. Nel? _Nel?_ He’d known she had a bit of a crush, but…oh, god, how the hell was he ever going to look any of those people in the eye again? Scratch that, how was he ever going to look at Nel and not imagine her massive tits spraying milk on him? He didn’t even like milk!

“She could hose me any day,” Yoruichi said frankly, and burped with the cautious force of someone who was worried she’d vomit. Kon’s jaw dropped in confused excitement.

Thankfully, that seemed to turn the tide of the conversation away from all things Ichigo and onto more respectable topics, such as the weirdest fetishes and dealbreakers they’d ever experienced. Kon was rapt as he listened, having absolutely no experience whatsoever with sex but a lot of opinions on what should go where and what fluids were and were not okay. Ichigo listened with one angled ear, but mostly just flexed his paws and stared up at Grimmjow from his position belly-up in the triangle of his spread thighs, enjoying the rote motions of his fingers dragging through his fur.

Maybe what he was doing just then counted as a weird fetish. Role play? Or maybe he was just being a deceitful jerk and Yoruichi was right, apart from gathering blackmail material he didn’t really have any business transforming into a cat just to be petted by a grumpy arrancar with an unexpected soft side and nice hands. Grimmjow wasn’t even participating in the conversation happening around them; just stroking him with automatic motions, his eyes miles away. He was definitely more than a little bit drunk, too. The moonshine they’d brought smelled stronger than the sake by a long shot, and Grimmjow had been tossing it back like water.

The hour grew late with Ichigo dozing comfortably in what was fast becoming his favourite spot to sit, but it came to an end when Grimmjow got tired of drinking sullenly and decided he was going to bed. Ejected from his warm nest, Ichigo watched in dismay as long legs unfolded and Grimmjow pushed himself to his feet. The effects of the moonshine were apparent; wobbling unsteadily for an instant, he threw out a hand to brace on the wall while his balance settled. His squint was displeased. Glazed blue eyes scanned the room for a moment, then fell on Urahara.

“Goin’ to bed. I’ll head home tomorrow.”

“I very much doubt that,” Urahara said merrily, “given the hangover that brew is notorious for bringing down on the unsuspecting imbiber. But very well. Good night, Grimmjow! Sweet dreams!”

Muttering something even Ichigo’s keen ears couldn’t catch, Grimmjow just waved off the words and the amused calls from the others, staggering slightly with an exaggerated walk out of the living area. Jeez, he was super drunk.

“Perhaps you might stay close to him, King?” Urahara asked lightly. “Just ensure he doesn’t choke on his own vomit in his sleep or something equally unfortunate.”

The casual way Urahara suggested that Ichigo should watch Grimmjow sleep through the night made it sound like a lighthearted errand, and not spending potentially eight hours in his bedroom while he snored off some potent moonshine. Or had liver failure. One of the two. Still, the way he’d stumbled off hadn’t looked too good. Grimmjow’s tolerance for alcohol was massive, if the previous get togethers he’d been present for had been any indication. Sighing, Ichigo turned and followed his path down the hall, prepared to scratch a hole in the shoji screen if need be.

“That…that’s definitely Ichigo, right?” Kon said, sounding dubious. Tessai choked on his drink.

_“What?”_

Ichigo left them to their laughter. Tessai wouldn’t tell on him, probably. The man was a vault of weird secrets. Up ahead, Grimmjow’s door was wide open, the room dark. Trotting toward it, tail held high in the air, Ichigo all but bounded the last couple of feet into the bedroom before Grimmjow noticed it was open and shut it again. Being small had a lot of perks, but there were some things he missed. His opposable thumbs, for one thing.

Blinking in the new darkness, it took him a second to focus as his eyes adjusted. It took far less time than it would as a human, but what his new vision showed him was…a lot of skin. Grimmjow’s, specifically: he’d stripped out of his black outfit and was stumbling back to shut the door, totally buck-ass naked. If Ichigo hadn’t seen the exact same sight a few hours prior he probably would have squawked and given himself away. As it was he just hunkered down on the tatami mats and waited for Grimmjow to settle. It didn’t even look like he’d noticed him there yet.

Weaving slightly on his feet, Grimmjow made his way back to his futon and ripped the blankets back, got in and pulled them barely to his waist. Sprawled messily on his back, limbs askew, he groaned a little.

“Feels like the bed’s floating around the fuckin’ room,” Grimmjow said, swallowing thickly. “King, that you I can hear breathing?”

Figuring it wasn’t weird to acknowledge the question, Ichigo chirped in his throat a little.

“Huh. Jus’ don’t shit in my room.”

With that deeply offensive last directive, Grimmjow seemed to pass out, chest lifting and lowering in slow, deep breaths. His fingertips twitched a few times, and then they too were still. He looked like a dropped doll; too many loose joints and angles for anything approaching human to look like it was naturally asleep. Grimmjow did a pretty decent job of appearing like an angry-but-mostly-human male, but as Ichigo approached on four silent feet to watch the slide of blue hair brush his cheek on every breath, he looked anything but human. Anything like mundane.

Drunk asshole, Ichigo thought, reluctantly fond.

Padding all the way up to Grimmjow’s bare side, just between his flank and upper arm, Ichigo settled himself down into a comfortable fold and tipped his head onto Grimmjow’s rising ribcage. There was nothing strange about his sleep, but Ichigo would watch on regardless.

He had nothing better to do, anyway.

Front paws flexing and clenching in the firm skin under his claws, Ichigo squinted lazily and resigned himself to a quiet night of watching an arrancar sleep off a wealth of bad choices.

Yeah.

He had nothing better to do than that.

 

* * *

 

It was the waking up that made Ichigo realise he’d fallen asleep at all. A noise woke him, maybe, or a movement. Something pulled him from the warm lull of slumber, drawing him out of nice dreams and turning his nose down into the warmth of familiar, soapy scented skin, eyes squeezing shut against the tug of wakefulness. He was too comfortable, too warm to be getting up yet. Still on the bleeding edge of sleep, Ichigo shifted his legs a little and folded his hands into a relaxed tuck beneath his chin. His tail swished softly.

Ichigo was almost slipping back away into slumber when his fingertips flexed once, twice against the muscle under them. 

Fingers.

Hands.

Hands?

_He had hands?_

Eyes snapping open in blind horror, Ichigo flexed all ten of his fingers like he’d never seen them before. He still couldn’t; even the pale, watery moonlight filtering in through the window couldn’t properly illuminate the room to his poor shinigami vision. Especially not when he was caught in a half-form. His ears flicked—both sets of them.

Oh god, Ichigo thought, his heart hammering, his eyes unseeing. He’d transformed in his sleep. And not all the way. Tail, ears, the cold shiver from a lack of thick fur prickling his skin, it all said he’d lost control. Mostly shinigami. And just a little bit cat.

Under his chin, a warm chest was thudding a steady, calm heartbeat. A slow drum of grounding rhythm, backed up by the soft puff of breath ruffling his hair. Grimmjow was still perfectly, obliviously asleep. All—all he had to do was back out of the room in silence, and it’d all be okay. Turning his eyes to Grimmjow’s slack profile, watching the flick and curve of his hair and the parted softness of his mouth, Ichigo slowly began to reverse his way from Grimmjow’s pliant side.

Blue eyes opened slowly, their depths utterly black in the night.

“Kurosaki,” Grimmjow murmured, barely making syllables of his sounds. His lips twitched at the corners. On a sudden, sleepy inhale of breath, he shifted just enough that the careless stroke of warm fingers ran up Ichigo’s naked spine, just once. It could have been an accident or a caress. Ichigo didn’t know which. All he knew was that Grimmjow’s expression was slowly losing the fog of sleep, gaining clarity in its place.

He was out of time.

Another minute—no, another second and the moment would become memory—

Panicking above him, Ichigo shoved himself up on his knees, cocked his fist and punched Grimmjow as hard as he could in the unprotected left side of his face.

Head snapping to the side, blood dripping from the impact bite on his lip, Grimmjow never even made a sound. His eyes hazed out and shut, as vulnerable and surprised as anything that hadn’t seen an enemy until the last possible second. But he was out cold, unprotected in the dark. Barely covered by sheets and the half-press of Ichigo’s own body, warm against his.

“Fuck,” Ichigo whispered in the dark, his eyes wide and wounded. His hand ached. “Fuck.”

It was all okay. Grimmjow would think it was a dream. Some alcohol fuelled thing—if he remembered anything at all. Ichigo was safe. His secret was safe, and all it had cost him was the sting of his knuckles and the deep weight of guilt in the bottom of his stomach.

He looked…so open. Unprotected. His face was turned away; his naked cheek exposed to the moonlight. It painted him in cold strokes of blue-white and shadow. Black was running off the corner of his lip. Blood. Ichigo thumbed it away before he could stop himself. God, he’d sucker-punched Grimmjow just for waking up. For almost seeing the truth.

Reaching out gingerly, Ichigo ran his fingertips lightly over the place his fist had struck the hardest. It felt warmer than the rest of his cheek with the flush of blood beneath the skin, but it wasn’t broken. Hearing the pained hitch of his breath, Ichigo pulled his hand away in startled sorrow. His body soon followed suit.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and wondered why it mattered that Grimmjow wasn’t even aware enough to curse him for what he’d just done. Hadn’t that been the purpose?

Scrambling away silently, feeling strange and lost, Ichigo threw himself out the bedroom door and down the hall. The house was silent. They’d all gone to bed. It’d be safe to go home and forget that had happened.

_Kurosaki._

Grimmjow had almost looked pleased to see him—

No, he hadn’t. He’d been dreaming.

But the hand that touched him—

Just a graze from his movement. Nothing at all.

Getting out into the night air, feeling his skin prickle with cold and the lack of a coat of ginger fur, Ichigo pulled in a long, shuddering breath.

Nothing at all.

Turning for home, Ichigo flash-stepped from the Urahara Shop, leaving it and all his muddled questions behind.

Maybe he should leave King behind, too.

He was getting in too deep.

Way too deep.

Ichigo ran home, feeling the slide of Grimmjow's blood between his fingers all the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mad, massive, huge and incredible thanks to **trevo** for her art addition to this chapter! dear god, look upon her work. i've been sitting on that image for what feels like my entire life, [and now i finally get to share it with all of you. (now with an amazing additional comic!!)](https://trevoshere.tumblr.com/post/183996541213/for-murderlight-s-newest-chapter-of-cat-scratch)
> 
> mm. straight in that furry spank bank. 
> 
> yeah, i know what you perves are here for: cat face in hollow hole action. _and i delivered_.


	7. Chapter 7

A sleepless night, a mild hangover courtesy of Kon drinking the night before and a heaping amount of cringing regret gave Ichigo all the incentive he needed to make a proper decision about his recent…activities. 

It was time to put King to rest. Now, before it all got too deep and creepy and co-dependent. Sleeping on Grimmjow? Things had officially gone too damn far, and it didn’t matter how much encouragement Yoruichi and Urahara were trying to give. What he was doing wasn’t right. It was an invasion of Grimmjow’s privacy, it was an abuse of trust, but more importantly it was kinda pathetic of him to be doing it. 

“It’s complete stalker behaviour,” Kon agreed when Ichigo asked. Reclining on the bed pillow, he frowned over at where Ichigo sat at his desk. “And that’s speaking with the authority of someone who’s done their fair share of pretending to be an innocent stuffed lion just so I could get into a pretty girl’s house. It might be nice in the short-term, but once it sinks in that you’ll never be able to have what everyone else has and that you’re a sad facsimile of a healthy, living human, reality will come crashing back down and leave you feeling like a cheap fraud who deserves to be alone forever.” Kon shrugged and stacked his paws behind his head. “But you know, you didn’t bother to tell me about your stupid plan so I guess this advice is coming a little late.” 

“This is about my issues,” Ichigo said in annoyance. “Stop hijacking my problems with your existential angst. If you get it so much, what should I do? Fake King’s death? Or just never transform again? What if I need to actually do it one day and I can’t because Grimmjow is around?” 

Kon snorted. “Ichigo, when would you ever need to turn into that testosterone-filled orange feather duster?” 

“Don’t be jealous, Kon.” 

“Who’s jealous? Just because you have seventeen transformation forms and I have a cheap brand knock-off stuffed animal body—all right, fine. I’m a little sour. Go complain to someone else about your problems.” Rolling onto his stomach, Kon gave every appearance of cancelling out of the conversation in favour of taking a nap. Ichigo felt a strong urge to jam a pencil in his fuzzy ass-cheek, but restrained it. Tetchy bastard. Maybe it was a little unfair to be complaining about his transformational woes to Kon, who was either a pill or a tenant of two bodies that weren’t actually his. Maybe a little insensitive, actually. Reaching over, Ichigo gave him an apologetic pat on the ass instead. 

There was no response at first, just a sulking silence. Then, “Pervert.”

“Said the pervert.” Ichigo smiled a little. “Hey, don’t worry about it. You’re right though, I kinda did know where it was all going to lead. Grimmjow won’t ever be friends with me, and I need to just accept that. Sneaking around in disguise will just end up making me feel like a loser.” 

“You are a loser,” Kon clapped back, then caught Ichigo’s wrist with his legs and flipped over. “But you’re a good loser. That Grimmjow guy, I don’t know, I don’t really see what the big deal is. Sure, he’s a cool warrior type with bone structure that could cut glass, blue hair and that mysterious, compelling aura surrounding him, but he’s not actually that nice to talk to. Why bother to get on his good side? He seems like an energy drain.” Kon looked at him for a few more seconds, flopping back onto the pillow when he didn’t get an answer. Maybe he knew Ichigo didn’t even have one. “Suits me if you give up on him. It’s been boring lately with you fixating.”

Leave it to Kon to have impure motives when it came to his half-baked advice. Kinda. He was making a lot of sense. Leaving him up there to have his nap, Ichigo started to head out of his bedroom with every intention of making a sandwich with his own two hands. Being fed like a, well, a king had been making him a little lazy. But as fate would have it, his phone started going off in a flurry of texts, vibrating its way off the edge of the desk and onto the bed. Kon grabbed it, but didn’t have the fingerprints to open it. Ichigo pulled it out of his fuzzy paws with a meaningful look. He was probably hoping it was Yoruichi.

It wasn’t Yoruichi. 

**[Sandal-Hat]:** _we ahve to go out and grimmjow is erally sick, could u come and mind him?_

**[Sandal-Hat]:** _no vomit, just sweats, shakes, migraine, murderous impulses_

**[Sandal-Hat]:** _jinta tried to give him his food tray and ended up wearing it. first degree chicken soup burn on his crotch_

** [Sandal-Hat]: ** _ i ask this as a favour but also as someone who knows what a golden chance this is for you to florence nightingale his angry and embittered self!  _

**[Sandal-Hat]:** _if u think about it you really owe me. get me a jar of the good vitamin c tablets that taste like oranges please, i want my urine to glow like a chernobyl sunset_

“Oh, hell no,” Ichigo said, and texted as such. “What the hell is a Florence Nightingale anyway?” He dipped his shoulder as Kon leapt across the room and chimped his way up his arm to read. 

“Oh Ichigo, you’re so young and stupid.” 

“So what is it?”

“Beats me. Maybe Urahara wants you to sing to him. Or put a pillow over his face.” Kon read up the thread and barked a laugh. “Moment of silence for Jinta’s blistered dick! I’m gonna go tell Yuzu.” He squirrel jumped off Ichigo’s shoulder and ran for the door, feet pap-pap-papping all the way out into the hallway and down the stairs. Ichigo wondered if he’d ever get used to seeing a stuffed lion run. Especially when it was to go tell his little sister—who’d  _ better _ not care—about Jinta’s burnt crotch. 

Ichigo’s phone dinged again.

** [Sandal-Hat]:  ** _ honestly kurosaki-san, sometimes i think you want to be alone _

Ichigo felt his stomach squeeze a little. No other messages followed. It seemed like Urahara was done making demands and pulling strings. But what did Urahara really know about what Ichigo wanted? Maybe it was just to be a cat and spy on people. Maybe it was just for laughs and blackmail material. Maybe—maybe it was all just a stupid string of events gone wrong. 

Grimmjow would be fine. It was just a bad hangover, and he’d never take anyone’s help anyway. 

He was just sick.

And alone. 

And pushing everyone away. 

“Oh, god damn it.”

But this was the absolute last time.

 

* * *

 

 

“Hello?” Ichigo called when he got into the shop, walking up to the polished wooden platform that led into the house proper. Ururu watched him curiously from the counter. 

“If Kisuke-san told you to go in there, you should probably settle your worldly affairs first,” she said, drumming her fingers nervously on the faded wood. “Grimmjow isn’t his usual brand of nasty today. He’s worse. I stayed behind to run the shop but I think they just left because he was being a jerk.” She paused. “And he boiled Jinta’s sausage.” 

“It’d be great if you never said the word sausage again.” 

“Can I say penis?” 

“No.” 

“Dick?”

“No!”

“Dong.” 

“God, fine. Say sausage, and know that I will always resent you for ruining them for me.” Ichigo waved the paper bag of Urahara’s new vitamins at her. It turned out that Isshin kept an entire cupboard stocked with them just to bribe him. “I’m gonna drop this off and check on Grimmjow.” 

“Take care,” Ururu replied, eyes already back on her phone screen. “Yell if you need me, but Tessai-san said he’d break my little toe if I closed early for any reason. He’s lying, but I don’t really want to concuss him when he tries to switch off the wifi.”

Ichigo hesitated in pulling off his shoes. “How strong are you these days? Tessai’s a pretty big guy.” 

“Don’t know. Grimmjow says I’m getting pretty good though.” At his stare, she lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I fought one of his fracción back in the day and lived, which he thought was a pretty big deal for a thirteen year-old. He trains me sometimes, but Tessai hates it because I keep breaking the legs of old perverts at the train station. Grimmjow says I shouldn’t let anyone fuck with me.” Her eyes slid away sheepishly. “Oops, thats a few hundred yen in the swear jar.” 

Well that was food for thought. Grimmjow training Ururu, and probably Jinta as well, considering they were still civil to each other despite the harsh words the week before. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing a warrior like Grimmjow would enjoy, since he couldn’t get a decent fight out of them. Doing it out of the goodness of his heart didn’t sound quite right, either. Huh. Pulling on the house slippers kept in the low shelf by the shoji door, Ichigo gave Ururu a final salute and wandered into the house. 

Heading into the living area first made the most sense, at least so Ichigo could scope out the room and drop off the vitamins somewhere obvious. If Tessai saw and confiscated them from Urahara, so be it. It also meant he could dally around before he headed for Grimmjow’s bedroom with a lame excuse he hadn’t bothered to make up yet. The loose plans Ichigo made in his head were exactly why he stopped dead in the living room entrance at the sight of Grimmjow sitting hunched at the low table, his hands tangled in a mess of multicoloured wiring. Slowly he looked over at Ichigo with the dull, glassy gaze of someone who wanted to curl up and die but was too stubborn to actually do it. 

Grimmjow’s pallor was absolutely awful: so pale he was almost grey but for a red flush in each cheek that he didn’t usually have—and a purpling bruise spreading from his jaw to halfway up his left cheek. The results of the night before were right there on his skin. Guilt crawled its way up Ichigo’s stomach to lodge in his chest. It also looked like there was an array of medicinal powder sachets scattered on the other side of the room. Had he thrown them there? 

Under Ichigo’s startled attention Grimmjow just turned back to his latest power core, though it looked more like he was trying and failing to sort through the box of wires rather than do anything really productive. 

“Not gonna say hello?” Ichigo said finally, realising that through all his scrutiny he was simply being ignored. He shook the paper bag until blue eyes slanted it a look. “More vitamins for Urahara. Got anywhere I can put them?” 

“Up your ass,” Grimmjow said, sounding like he’d been gargling rusty nails. “Who gives a fuck. Throw ‘em here and get out.” 

“You look like shit,” Ichigo said, dismissing his words and sliding the screen shut behind him. “I’ve never seen a hangover look like that before.”

“’S not a fuckin’ hangover, that’s why. Fucking shinigami booze nearly poisoned me to death.”

“Yeah, alcohol can do that. Dumbass.” Sympathy was for nicer people. Tossing the vitamins down on the table, Ichigo wandered over to the packets on the floor and started scooping them up. They were old-timey looking folded paper squares of powder. Waxed paper sealed with the twelfth division insignia printed on them. Why twelve? Flipping them over, he read the labels. “Refined reishi powder. Water soluble. This other one says it’s a painkiller and cure-all for shinigami soldiers in the field. You should have some of these. If it doesn’t work it’ll just kill you, which I think might actually be an improvement.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” Grimmjow rasped. He was hunched so far forward on the table his hair was brushing the wood. Fingers that shook with tremors tried and failed to splice two white wires together, instead just mushing the fragile metal strands together. The growl that left his throat was angry—and defeated. “Fuck this. Go home, Kurosaki. Don’t need your bullshit today.” 

At least he didn’t look like he was still in a soup-hurling mood, Ichigo thought critically, already knowing he wasn’t going to leave even if Grimmjow threw every insult in the book at him. He felt too damn responsible for his current miserable state. The whole night before had tumbled out of his control the moment he faked his departure and left Grimmjow seething about his failed attempt to impress him with his social skills. Ichigo now knew that was what it had really been.

Grabbing all of the powders in both hands, Ichigo leaned over the table and bit the paper bag containing Urahara’s vitamins, catching it in his mouth. He turned for the internal shoji door that led into the kitchen and breakfast area, pushing it open with his foot. The muttered curse Grimmjow let out and small thunk of a forehead meeting wood went ignored. Let him sulk and complain about his self-inflicted alcohol poisoning. His fault for being a hollow trying to drink shinigami moonshine anyway. Hadn’t Urahara said it sent Hiyori blind for a few days? The shit had practically been gasoline. 

Working out the powders didn’t take long: each one was a single dose, meant to be dissolved into water. Ichigo grabbed two mugs from the cupboards and set the kettle to boil, pouring a reishi dose into one mug and the painkiller into the other. Both were just fine white powder. Urahara or Tessai must have left them for Grimmjow as a last ditch effort. Probably for Ichigo to find when he got there. But like hell was he going to start nursing him back to health, no matter what Urahara had been implying in his message. 

_ Sometimes I think you want to be alone. _

Ichigo frowned down at the mugs, and after another moment’s consideration grabbed a third down from the cupboard. There had to be tea there somewhere. 

“If you dump this on me I’m going to smash all your power cores,” Ichigo said a few minutes later, walking back into the living room with a flat tray in his hands. “Two of these are yours. I think you should drink the blue mug first, then the green one. The black mug is mine.” Setting them down on the table away from the nest of wires, he poked Grimmjow in the side of the head. He looked half-passed out on the table. When his head came up again there was a short red wire embedded in his forehead like a worm. Ichigo unthinkingly reached over and grabbed it before he realised he—Ichigo the human, at least—wasn’t someone who could just touch him like that. Thankfully Grimmjow didn’t break his hand, just rubbed his forehead warily. He knocked his own cheek by accident and hissed, like he’d forgotten the injury was there. Ichigo switched his gaze to distributing the mugs. At least Grimmjow was too out of it and too ill to realise he’d just been extremely weird. 

“Smells like nothing,” Grimmjow said groggily, squinting into the blue mug. “How do I know you’re not trying to poison me?” When Ichigo just shrugged, he scowled at the black mug. “What’s in that?”

“My tea,” Ichigo replied, affecting a casual sort of pose as he sat at the table. “Thought I might hang out here for a while. Kon’s doing nothing but complaining today either, so it’s not like I’ll get any peace if I go home. Now drink the suspicious powder I just painstakingly stirred into hot water for you. I want to see what it does.”

Ichigo was dangerously aware he was being too friendly in contrast to Grimmjow’s account of their parting the night before, and that maybe a foot out of line with their usual interactions might set Grimmjow off. It didn’t matter; he was just sitting there half folded over like a wet rag, misery in every line of his body and Ichigo was trying really hard not to let the soft fondness in his chest leak out all over his face. Grimmjow was openly showing him just how sick and miserable he felt like he knew Ichigo wouldn’t attack him while he was down. That was kind of like trust, wasn’t it? Just a little? 

Grimmjow raised the blue mug, as Ichigo had ordered, and took a long sip. His eyes were narrowed over the ceramic rim, and at Ichigo’s tipping hand motion, slugged the entire boiling hot dose of painkiller in one hit. 

“Oh my god, didn’t that just scald the hell out of you?” Ichigo blurted as the mug clattered down on the table in front of him. A shaking hand just grabbed the green mug next and did the exact same fish-gulping magic trick to the steaming reishi mixture. Then— “Hey, fuck off, that’s my tea!” 

Grimmjow got two gulps in before Ichigo yanked it out of his hand, almost sloshing it across his fingers. Flipping him off from the other side of the table, Ichigo took a proprietary gulp and promptly burnt his tongue. 

“Ow, fuck,” Ichigo muttered, two-handing the tea and keeping it on his side of the table. “I hope you piss your pants after drinking all that. How the hell did you drink something that hot?” 

Grimmjow’s first response was to burp a massive gust of tea-scented air towards him. Then, “Happy now, dickhead? You can go the fuck home now. Yoruichi ain’t even here.” 

“I’m not here for Yoruichi. I came to—”

“Drop off the vitamins, right. You did that.” Dropping his chin down onto folded forearms, Grimmjow shut his eyes slowly. His rumpled hair, still in dry waves from how he’d slept on it, fell across his bruised cheek. “Didn’t you say somethin’ about giving up last night? Assume that meant whatever you wanted outta me, and I’m sure as hell not fighting you like this. So go home already. Head’s fuckin’ splitting open.” Hunched over amongst the tangled multicoloured wires scattered across the table, to all appearances Grimmjow started to go to sleep. Or pray for death. One of the two. 

So he had a horrible headache and shaking. He didn’t look sweaty though, which was different to Urahara’s message. Chewing the corner of his lip, Ichigo gambled hard on his earlier reactions and reached out to touch Grimmjow’s forehead with the back of his hand. 

“Fuck off,” Grimmjow muttered. His teeth chattered a little with the order. Ichigo’s hand moved to lightly brush the bruised cheek, a bad feeling gathering in his stomach. “I’m gonna break your f-fucking hand, Kuro—”

“Are you cold?” Ichigo asked, scrambling around the edge of the table on his knees. “Because I’m not an expert, but you’ve got a hell of a fever. I think you’re coming on with some chills.” Grabbing Grimmjow’s fingers inside of his, they felt warm. The bright glaze in his blue eyes and the flush of his cheeks was definitely a fever coming on hard. “Do me a favour and stay here, okay? I’m gonna fix some stuff up.” Maybe the moonshine really had poisoned his system. 

“Fix what,” Grimmjow asked in a muffled voice, hunching his shoulders down and burrowing his entire face into his arms. “Sh-shut up and go away.” 

“Man, you are really off your game,” Ichigo murmured sympathetically as he got up. Well, one perk from being King was that he knew exactly where everything in the house was, including Grimmjow’s bedroom and all the bathroom supplies. Time to get to work. 

The bedroom was first: it was a closed-up nest of stale air and dishevelled bedding that smelled vaguely like vanilla and sweat. The sheets were crumpled soft with wear so Ichigo ripped the whole lot off the bed and opened all the windows as wide as they’d go. Fresh air and crisp sheets was always the first thing Yuzu worked on when he was feeling shitty, so it’d work on Grimmjow too, right? He threw everything into the laundry sink and re-made the bed. It was a little crooked and the pillowcase didn’t match the sheets, but whatever. Then he ran upstairs. 

The bath plug was nowhere to be found. Ichigo stared in frustration for a second until he realised he had zero chance of getting Grimmjow into a bath anyway, so he darted into the hallway and rummaged in the cupboard until he found a small fold-down stool, usually kept for traditional scrubbing before a bath. He dumped it in the shower and started running it tepid. That would have to do. 

Next came the hard part: getting Grimmjow to cooperate. 

“I’m gonna need you to trust me a bit here,” Ichigo led in, bending and grabbing the black collar of his jumpsuit so Grimmjow sagged back upright. “And I’m human right now, so if you punch me I could die or something. Just go limp and then we can never speak of this again. Okay?” Before Grimmjow could gather so much as a single thought Ichigo had thrown his limp arm around his shoulders and tucked a hand under his folded knees, hauling Grimmjow up into a bridal carry. 

Because Ichigo had terrible luck it became quickly clear that Grimmjow wasn’t completely fever-hazed. He went utterly rigid the second his eyes opened, from wide blue eyes to both bare feet. 

“Kurosaki, what the f-fucking fuck—”

“Shut up, this is just faster. You’re not that heavy.” 

Struggling under his frankly awful fucking weight, Ichigo jostled Grimmjow a little higher and started for the stairs before Grimmjow could figure out whether he wanted to kill Ichigo for carrying him like—like something that needed help. Or, y’know, like a bride being carried over a threshold, except this was leading to a shower he was probably going to hate. 

Amazingly, the absurdity of the situation and Grimmjow’s own slowed reflexes kept him pondering the whole situation until Ichigo got to the top of the staircase, at which point he squirmed like an unhappy cat and Ichigo accidentally dropped him on his side. The mask hit the floor with a thunk. Or maybe it was his skull. 

“Just kill me,” Grimmjow rasped as he pushed himself back up. His cheeks were almost crimson and he was panting a little, but it was the shivering kicking in full force that bothered Ichigo the most. Weren’t they a sign of his temperature going way up? What the hell was an arrancar doing anyway, getting sick like this? Why had Urahara just  _left _ while Grimmjow was this ill? Fevers killed people all the time! What if it killed Grimmjow?! “If it’s you helping, I’d rather fuckin’ die.” 

“That’s hurtful,” Ichigo told him, heaving the sagging weight of him back up again. He came with almost no resistance, which was terrifying. “Complain to me later, okay? But first you’re gonna take a really cold shower. We’ve gotta get your temperature down a bit. You can—tell me you can manage to shower on your own.” When Grimmjow turned his head slowly to scowl at him, eyes unfocused, Ichigo saw some of the bull-headed determination return—the same determination that said he’d die before he’d let Ichigo give him a hand. Stupid pride. But at least he wouldn’t have to deal with any more naked Grimmjow. That whole bathroom was cursed, he was sure of it. 

When the door slammed shut, muffled cursing emanating from behind it saying he hadn’t collapsed and hit his head, Ichigo slid down the wall and tried to breathe. 

What the fuck was he doing? 

_ What the absolute fuck was he doing? _

The instant Grimmjow got better, he was going to hate Ichigo even more for seeing him stagger around like a drunk elephant, completely off his head on shinigami pain meds and a killer fever. He’d remember being carried, he’d remember Ichigo having to hold him up so he didn’t fall, he’d remember being too weak to help himself. In lending a hand, Ichigo had just screwed everything up. There was no way it could turn out any differently. 

“Damn it,” Ichigo whispered, tipping his head back against the wall. “But what else could I have done?” 

Having successfully crushed all his own hopes into the ground, Ichigo barely paid attention to what happened in the bathroom until the door opened again and Grimmjow hobbled out, a towel slung over his shoulders and a fresh jumpsuit zipped all the way up. Neither of them looked at each other. Giving up on the carrying idea, Ichigo went first down the stairs, pretending not to notice when a hand gripped his shoulder like a steel vice, using him for balance. The shudder that went through Grimmjow’s arm and into Ichigo was violent.

At least he could get the idiot tucked into bed where he belonged before Urahara came home. At least he didn’t get boiling water thrown on him. At least Grimmjow didn’t know he was King. At least, at least, at least. Ichigo was miserable. If he’d left him like that and gone home, they might still have a chance of not being assholes to each other twenty-four seven. Every other time Ichigo had tried it had worked out terribly. Well, the one actual time Ichigo had tried had gone terribly. Grimmjow had barely tried at all. 

“Get into the bed,” Ichigo said once he managed to tug Grimmjow off course and into his bedroom, then left him there to close the windows and pull the curtains across. Headaches and bright light didn’t mix. The shadows that filled the room as a result were cool and comforting. He didn’t turn to watch as Grimmjow groaned and sank into the futon, rustling his way down under the single sheet Ichigo had left him. “It should be a bit more comfortable now.” 

“Feels good,” Grimmjow said into the pillow, almost inaudible. When he turned his face out, his eyes were obscured by his hair. The mask was covering almost everything else. “F-figures it’d be you…seein’ me like this.” 

“Yeah, bad luck,” Ichigo replied, thinking about a drunk tumble into bed and eyes looking into his. “If you’d let Tessai and Urahara help you—”

“Glad it was you.” 

Ichigo’s mouth went dry. “What?” 

“You’ve seen me worse than this.” Grimmjow exhaled and pulled his knees up under the sheet, which were shivering along with him. “Lot worse than this. An’ if you already think I’m a piece of shit, then who the fuck cares, right?”

It was probably just encroaching delirium. Or the painkillers. Fevers and medicine made people say nonsense all the time. 

“I don’t think you’re a piece of shit,” Ichigo said, kneeling by his side and pulling the sheet edge up to his shoulders. Fingers clumsily tangled in his as a hand emerged to grasp the top of it, tugging it down around his neck. “You’re the one who thinks I’m a piece of shit. You practically snuggled up to Kon in ten seconds flat and still treat me like a leper. Why should I be nice?” 

“Bein’ pretty n-nice right now. Want me to snuggle up to you?”

Definitely bordering on delirium. Ichigo face matched Grimmjow’s by then, he was sure of it. 

“Get some rest. Does your head still hurt?” Slowly he pulled his fingers free. Grimmjow let them go with a faint frown. 

“Face hurts more.” 

Ichigo pounced. “How’d you get that bruise?” 

“F-fuck knows. Don’t even remember going to sleep. Think I drank too much.”

Relief didn’t even begin to cover it. 

“Oh, you think?” Unfolding to his feet, Ichigo started to back away from the futon. “I’m going to get you some water and see if there’s anything for fever in those medicine pouches. You want ice?”

“No.”

“I’m gonna get you some ice.” 

“Fuck off.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Turning for the door, mentally making a list of what he could and should bring into the room on that tea tray in the living room, he almost missed the muttered words that followed him out.

“Thanks, Kurosaki.” 

Stopping in his tracks, still staring into the hallway, Ichigo felt his whole chest glow with warmth. 

Gratitude. From Grimmjow. Even if it was just some feverish mumbling, it  _ counted.  _

Ichigo was just trying to decide whether to pretend he didn’t hear or not when Grimmjow spoke again. 

“Oi, if you see a cat around, b-bring it in, would you? Miss that little fucker.”

Elation crashed straight down into dismay; a structural support pulled loose on the whole morning. A great big Jenga tower of lies, ready to topple on all that progress. Ichigo winced, his head lowering. The hallway looked like both a trap and an exit. What the hell should he say? 

“If I see it,” he agreed, unable to look back. “But there was nothing around when I arrived.” 

There was no other reply, just some rustling sheets. Ichigo fled before Grimmjow could say anything else. 

King was gone. That decision had already been made, and he had to stick to it before he made things even worse than they already were. Spirits passed on by themselves all the time, when they let go of their worldly ties. King just passed on too, happy and with no reason to hang around. It was as good an explanation as any.

Grimmjow would get over it. 

It was just a cat, anyway. 


	8. Chapter 8

It was late afternoon by the time any other movement in the house stirred, signalling either the shop’s closing time or Urahara and the others coming home. The dying sunlight was pressing deep orange and brilliant through the gap in the curtains, dyeing the bedroom in streaks of amber and gold. Hours had passed, but Ichigo had barely noticed.

“Red, yellow, white and blue,” Ichigo repeated to himself, fingers neatly winding wires over and under each other into a flat braid. The plans spread on the floor in front of him looked just like the multicoloured tail he was weaving. “Stop when the wires are back in order to mirror the other end, clip at twenty centimetres, leaving some room to strip the ends. This isn’t so hard.” Tucking his legs more comfortably under him, he cast Grimmjow a wary look as he finished up another one. “You’re not even gonna appreciate my hard work when you wake up, are you?”

No response, not that one was expected. Grimmjow had all but passed out soon after he’d crawled into his newly-changed sheets; a forearm thrown up over his eyes at some point to block the dusky sunlight coming through. The curtains were a little too thin for the intensity of the afternoon light.

Ichigo wasn’t completely sure when or why he’d decided to stick it out in the bedroom with him, other than he had nothing else to do with his day and Grimmjow was actually better company when he was unconscious. An hour after he’d fallen asleep, Ichigo had decided to clean up the plans and wires in the living room and found that the latest work required a load of confusing wiring, but there was a supplementary guide on a fold-out piece of paper that showed how to weave them together neatly. Mostly so the whole power core didn’t go off like a bomb when one was connected incorrectly. With nothing better to do, he’d started winding the sets together according to the pictures. At least if he was just prepping the new wires Grimmjow couldn’t accuse him of being a glory whore like he had last time. Asshole.

Ichigo was almost finished his third set of wires when the bedroom door slid open quietly and a face peered in. Urahara blinked down at him, hat brim tilted slightly so he could focus on the scene. He looked a little surprised.

“Ururu said you’d been here hours, but I honestly thought you’d just left through the back door.”

Ichigo frowned down at the woven wires, making sure he didn’t miss a loop. “I didn’t like how hot his fever was burning. How could you just leave him here alone like that? It was more than just a stupid hangover, that shinigami alcohol he was drinking hit him like poison. I didn’t think you were that cruel.”

Urahara shrugged. “Grimmjow was magnificently unwilling to cooperate with any of us. I lost half an eyebrow to one of his surprise cero attacks. See?” Pulling off his hat in a flourish, Urahara turned his head until Ichigo could see the faint pink haze of a burn on one side of his face. It was true; the tail end of his eyebrow was down to crunchy-looking stubble. Ichigo settled a little, turning to look down at Grimmjow’s sleeping face. He hadn’t tried any of that stuff on him. Probably too sick by then to try. “Contacting you was both a precaution and a last ditch effort to find someone he wouldn’t try to murder on the spot. I really am a genius, you know. Has his condition improved?”

There were a lot of things Ichigo could have said on the topic of Urahara’s intelligence and willingness to risk other people’s asses for his end goals, but he settled for gesturing at the sleeping, sheet-covered lump that was Grimmjow. Sweat was gleaming on his temple and the curve of his neck. His eyes were hidden by his arm but the line of his mouth was relaxed, lips parted slightly on each breath.

“Fever broke about an hour ago. He’s just sleeping the rest of it off, I think.”

“And the medicine?”

“Took the reishi powder and the painkiller mixed with some water.”

“Incredible,” Urahara murmured. “We couldn’t even coax him into drinking water plain. You already know how Jinta went with his soup. You really have a way with—”

“Save it,” Ichigo said crossly. “You’re too loud. Maybe get Tessai to make another load of that soup and pour more reishi into it. That’s his real food while he’s in the living world, isn’t it?”

“It is indeed.” Putting his hat back on, Urahara smiled a little. “I’ll see that something is made for you as well. It’s getting late, and the Kurosaki-san I know probably forgot all about his own needs. Our little Florence Nightingale is so diligent!”

“Fuck off.” Ichigo scowled over at Urahara as he shut the door on his own laughter, probably off to tell Tessai all about it. At least there would be food involved. He really hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast.

Finishing up another set of wires to the specifications on the plan, Ichigo bound the ends together with one of the elastic bands in the box of miscellaneous parts and wires. It was just a battered wooden box, probably not even meant for the kinds of things that were held inside it. There was a burned-in hell butterfly motif on the top. Soul Society merchandise. Deep gouge marks mutilated the design, like knives had tried to dig it out. Or claws. Fishing around inside the box between spools of coloured wire, he found a strong flathead screwdriver that could act as a rough chisel. Shutting the lid again, Ichigo started quietly gouging the butterfly out the rest of the way.

He had a quarter of it completely unrecognisable when he looked up and saw a single blue eye watching him from beneath a concealing forearm. The screwdriver immediately slipped and jabbed him hard in the centre of his other palm.

“Ow! Shit.” It wasn’t bleeding, but it had hurt. Ichigo clenched his fist around the soreness as Grimmjow pushed himself upright, rubbing his sweaty forehead into the crook of his elbow and groaning quietly to himself. “Hey. How’re you feeling?”

“Like someone threw a bucket of water at me,” Grimmjow grumbled, throwing the sheet off all the way and unzipping his jumpsuit to the waist. Ichigo flexed his sore hand as he watched him shrug out of the upper half of the outfit, pressing at his sweaty skin in disgust. He frowned at the light pouring in the window. “S’gotta have been four hours since I fell asleep.”

Ichigo thought about it. “Yeah, but your fever only broke about an hour ago. You feel a bit better now, right?”

“Were you in here watching me sleep the whole afternoon?” Grimmjow asked instead, his expression guarded. Ichigo just pointed at the box.

“I cleaned this up and bound up some wires for the current power core you’re messing with. You did want to replace all the old wires, right?” He opened the lid of the wooden box and pulled out his handiwork. The last thing he needed was Grimmjow thinking he was some kind of creep who stared at sleeping people.

Grimmjow barely glanced at the wires. “I don’t give a fuck what you were doing, Kurosaki. Why the hell were you doing it in my bedroom?”

The box shut with a dull thump as Ichigo pushed it toward Grimmjow, his mouth flattened into a cautious line. Pushing off the floor with his sore palm, Ichigo got up out of his cross-legged fold beside the bed. He didn’t get far before Grimmjow grabbed his wrist with a warm, sweaty hand, holding him half-standing and bent almost at face level. The glower he received was less than friendly. Jeez.

“Well, what do you think I was doing?” Ichigo said defensively. “You were sick and you’d taken painkillers with ingredients I didn’t know about. I stayed so I could make sure you got better instead of worse. You were practically delirious before you fell asleep.”

“No I wasn’t.”

Ichigo snorted. “You thanked me, Grimmjow. Pretty sure you were—”

“I wasn’t fuckin’ delirious, dickhead!” The hand on his wrist yanked so hard Ichigo face-planted on the floor, clipping the wooden corner of the box. Ribs lighting up with pain, he pushed himself up and turned to glare at Grimmjow. The expression that met his was dark with misgivings. “I’m asking why you gave a fuck and sat in here for hours. I’m not one of your little dipshit friends and I sure as hell ain’t fawning over you for it. So what was it? Pathetic arrancar left alone can’t take care of himself? Gotta play hero? That it?”

“I was worried about you!” Ichigo snapped back, slugging Grimmjow hard in the shoulder. Even ill, he barely budged. “Fuck knows why, though, when you’re an unmitigated asshole every time I try to do something for you. I should have figured this would be the end result.”

“I don’t want you worrying about me,” Grimmjow spat, knocking Ichigo’s fist away when it came for his face this time. “And I sure as shit don’t want to owe you anything—”

“I don’t want you to either!” This time Ichigo got to his feet for real. “Get better soon, asshole. Good luck with the power core. I shouldn’t have fucking come.”

“Fine, fuck off. Not like I care,” Grimmjow fumed, looking away. “I am who I am. If you don’t like it—”

“You never even give me a chance to like it! You’re always a huge dick to me!”

“I’m a dick to everyone!” Realising what he’d said, Grimmjow grit his teeth hard. The look he gave Ichigo was pure angry spite. “But you? You get my back up with this fuckin’ Saint Kurosaki bullshit. Don’t pretend you’re doing this shit to be nice. You’re not nice. You want something. Everyone always fuckin’ wants _something_. So what is it?”

“Nothing!”

“Bullshit!” Grabbing his leg at the knee, Grimmjow bent it until Ichigo folded hard back down onto the tatami, thumping beside him. By the time Ichigo looked up his face was only inches away and furious, Grimmjow’s eyes a dark blue glitter in the dying orange light. “Figure it out, fuckwit! Why’d you come? Why’d you look after me? And why the absolute fuck did you stay? What does Kurosaki Ichigo actually _want?_ ”

“I want you to like me!”

“I already do!”

Ichigo’s eyes widened. Half-caught in some kind of insult he hadn’t thought of yet, his lips stayed parted on words that wouldn’t come. Grimmjow bristled in the ringing silence that followed, shoving his arms back through the holes in his jumpsuit and yanking the zipper back up, like it could armour him from what he’d just admitted. Ichigo tried to get his shit together.

“No, you don’t. You always…”

“Told you. I’m like that with everyone.”

“You’re worse with me.”

“S’pose.” Grimmjow looked away. “Not like you don’t give it right back.”

Ichigo swallowed and licked his lips, his mind racing for something to say.

“Ururu said you train her.”

“Yeah.”

“But you never want to fight me anymore.”

“So?”

“So I miss it.” Too honest! Ichigo panicked internally a little when Grimmjow darted him a quick, disbelieving look. “I mean, I haven’t had a good fight in ages and Urahara always makes it weird. If I tried with Yoruichi she’d just—”

“Don’t really care about that,” Grimmjow broke in, his whole face scrunching down into a grimace. “No point fighting you if I can’t go all out.” His fingers were clenching and unclenching in the sheet pooled beside him on the futon. “Hurry up and die already.”

Huh. That was an insult he’d used before. Ichigo remembered it because he knew how stung he’d felt the first time Grimmjow had said those words. At the time he’d thought it meant Grimmjow just wanted him to go and die somewhere to leave him alone. But the way he said it…

“You don’t want to end my human life,” Ichigo said in amazement. “You never did, did you? I always thought my humanity made you sick or something, or it turned you off wanting to fight me, but you’re waiting.” The full force of that hit him all the harder when Grimmjow just watched his reaction play out, shoulders lifting in a small, jerky shrug. “You actually want me to live this life first.”

“Whatever,” Grimmjow said, seeming ill at ease with whatever he was seeing on Ichigo’s face. “It’s not like it matters to me. Ten years, thirty, sixty, time doesn’t matter that much when you’re a hollow.”

“It matters to me, dumbass,” Ichigo said, shifting and sitting cross-legged beside the futon. “You told me you’d lost interest in fighting me and I knew it was to do with being human, but—why does everything have to be a fight to the death with you?”

“Not with me, with you. Just you.”

Ichigo squinted. “You just said you like me!”

“So?”

“Oh my god. Typically people don’t want to kill people they like.”

Grimmjow just shrugged again, rubbing at his temple tiredly. He was overdoing it, Ichigo realised grudgingly, and nowhere near up for arguments or whatever they were doing. Spewing frustrations, maybe. It sure didn’t feel like an argument. If anything it felt kinda…nice.

Grimmjow liked him. Even if he was tragically underdeveloped in social norms and still wanted to kill him one day, Grimmjow liked him. Kurosaki Ichigo. Liked him enough to put their grudge match on hiatus for however long it took him to grow up and get old and—oh, gross. Did that mean Grimmjow would still be getting around looking smooth and muscular and youthful when Ichigo was a shrivelled old balding man bouncing Yuzu’s grandkids on his knee?

The thought preoccupied him as Grimmjow pushed the sheets all the way off, getting to his feet in a wavering sort of unfurling of limbs. Unsteady on the futon, he compensated for his lack of immediate balance by planting his palm on the top of Ichigo’s head, using him like a crutch.

“Hey.” Stiffening his shoulders and neck, Ichigo pushed up against the pressure on his skull. “Can you not put all your weight on my neckbones?”

“You can take it,” Grimmjow said, stepping onto solid ground. When Ichigo just frowned up through his hair, Grimmjow scruffed it all up with a few twists of his hand. It felt so startlingly like being petted as King that he didn’t even react right away to the sensation of long fingers scratching along his scalp. For reasons unknown, they both froze at the same time and pulled apart from the contact.

“I should make sure Urahara isn’t spiking your soup,” Ichigo said hurriedly.

“Gonna shower off all this fever sweat,” Grimmjow said over the top of him, trying for a confident stride to the door and failing. “Do whatever you want.”

“Okay.” Ichigo’s reply was spoken to the empty room. Even recovering from sickness, Grimmjow was an arrancar and he could still move like one. Blinking at the wrinkled mess of the damp sheets, he thought about stripping the futon for the second time that day. Somehow it felt like it would be ten times more humiliating if Urahara watched him do it, so he left the bed alone. Even if Grimmjow did like him, he sure didn’t like being looked after. He could do his own laundry. Ichigo wasn’t a maid.

Getting up slowly, Ichigo tried not to think about why his skin felt prickly and his heart was thumping. Grimmjow would change his mind inside of half an hour, anyway. Maybe it was just all the medicine talking.

He shouldn’t get his hopes up.

 

* * *

 

“Ichi-nii!” Yuzu exclaimed delightedly as she walked into the living room of Urahara’s home. “I knew you’d be here again! Why didn’t you tell Dad you’d be gone all day? He had me trying to compose your eulogy.”

Looking up from his bowl of reheated chicken noodle soup, Ichigo waved his spoon at his sister. She sure was coming by late: it had to be past five. Guess he’d be walking her home. Tucked in her arms was a small basket with a towel over the top. Maybe that was the reason for the late visit. Across the table, Grimmjow was unenthusiastically stirring his reishi-spiked soup without eating any. He barely blinked at her.

“Yeah, I had some things to take care of here,” Ichigo said easily, hoping she wouldn’t ask exactly what.

“Yes, Kon told me all about Jinta-kun’s accident.” Walking into the house in her socks, she tiptoed around Grimmjow with a suspicious squint, putting the basket down on the empty side of the table. “There’s a wobbly kind of blur here. Is this Grimmjow-san?”

Flicking his eyes over her from head to toe in a quick, assessing glance, Grimmjow gave a quick shrug.

“Grimmjow-sama to you.” More stirring. He prodded at a piece of carrot with a look of deep mistrust. “Guessing you’re a Kurosaki.”

Yuzu tilted her head slightly in confusion. Ichigo gulped down a new mouthful of hot soup and filled in the blanks.

“This is Yuzu. She has a hard time seeing and hearing spirits, but she can sense you’re there. Yuzu, this is Grimmjow, he’s—”

“Been sick all day,” Yuzu finished brightly, and pulled the towel off the basket. “It’s not soup, but I thought maybe some of my best peanut butter cookies might help. They’re extra chewy.” Inside the basket were easily two dozen fresh baked cookies. They smelled like heaven. “Dad had to pour the reishi powder into the mixture since I couldn’t see the measurements. Or the jar. I hope I got it right; I’ve never baked for a hollow before.” Her cheeks pinked. “I guess Jinta-kun can have some too if he wants.”

Putting down his spoon, Grimmjow slowly leaned over until he could see into the basket properly. The look he raised to Ichigo was wary. He looked like a wild thing approaching a possible trap. Ichigo grabbed one of the cookies—the still-warm cookies!—out and took a huge bite. Soft, nutty goodness melted across his tongue in buttery sweet crumbs. Yuzu had really brought out the big guns this time.

“Hey fuck off, those are mine,” Grimmjow said instantly, swiping at him. Ichigo pulled back but his fingertips still ripped off half of the cookie. Crumbs sprayed the table between them as he crammed it into his mouth, chewing with angry warning.

“I was just taste-testing them,” Ichigo said, masking his satisfaction. Nothing like goading with theft to get a possessive bastard moving. “Greedy asshole. You’ve been asleep all day, it’s me who should be getting rewards.” He shot Yuzu a grumpy look. “How come you never cook me things anymore?”

“Because Urahara-san said you’re getting fat from doing nothing but drinking every week and avoiding his training opportunities.” There wasn’t even a hint of deceit in her words. Fucking Urahara, seriously.

“I work out plenty!” When Yuzu just nodded consolingly, his blood pressure skyrocketed. Ichigo grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it all the way up. “I have abs! Look at them! I’m still sculpted, Yuzu. Urahara is a liar.” Across the table Grimmjow choked on a crumb, which served him right for even witnessing the whole exchange. “Cook me desserts, damn it.”

Swift thumping footsteps came from the hallway, way too fast to be a normal approach. Jinta skidded in sideways with eyes like dinner plates, his fly open and an ice pack in one hand. Three noses wrinkled as one at the sight.

“Yuzu-san! I—uh, Tessai said you were here.” Jinta almost vibrated with tension. Belatedly realising, he hid the ice pack behind his back. “In the house, I mean. On purpose. You smell good.”

God, teenagers really had no romantic skills. Was this what Kon looked like trying to hit on someone? No, it was worse. Kon at least had some confidence from his years of reading self-help books and running around town in his body. Ichigo had asked some time ago whether his body was still a virgin, but Kon had only laughed and run away. Having found him controlled-breathing into a paper bag later, he’d say things were still safe. Jinta was just chronically afflicted by Yuzu, it seemed. And that…well, maybe it was kinda sweet after all.

Yuzu looked down at the basket of cookies. “I think the smell is just these. You can have some if you want, but judging from the weird invisible tornado I can see, maybe I should make you something else? For your…um, burn.”

Jinta blinked at Yuzu in speechless wonder for an entire moment. Then, flinching, he suddenly threw the ice-pack away and zipped his fly.

“You’d bake me something? Really?”

“Well, you have been giving me discounted candy for a while now,” Yuzu replied, darting Ichigo a strangely nervous glance. Yuzu was never nervous with Jinta. Was it about his advice not to tease him for his shaved head? “It’s time I returned the favour a little, don’t you think?”

“No,” Jinta said stoutly. “I like giving you things. Besides, Yoruichi says I had it coming for trying to feed a wild animal like Grimmjow when I’m a sawn-off moron who can’t even tell the difference between shampoo and hair remover.”

Across the table, Grimmjow looked up from his cookie-foraging and frowned like he wasn’t sure whether to be offended or not. Listening and trying to pretend he wasn’t, Ichigo mimed being given a cookie from the basket. Grimmjow wordlessly gave him the finger and kept rummaging about. Should he swipe for it?

“Is that what caused the hairstyle change?” Yuzu gasped. “You—oh no, was it Doctor Babyskin? That stuff is so good! I use it on my legs all the time.” Tiptoeing forward, Yuzu reached right up to Jinta’s head and touched his scalp. “Yep, I’d recognise that work anywhere! The new hair growth is always really soft. You’re going to have amazing hair when it all grows back, Jinta-kun!”

“Yeah?” Jinta blurted excitedly, touching his head where Yuzu’s fingers had been. “That’s cool! But I don’t know, I might keep it short. Ichigo said it makes me look like a mugger, and I kind of dig that.”

Yuzu’s expression cooled slightly. “You trust Ichi-nii’s taste more than mine? Look at his head! Trust me, I know style. Let’s go to the bathroom, I’ll show you some great examples on my phone. I think we should definitely Babyskin your head again though. You know, to make sure it really sank in the first time.” Grabbing his wrist, all offers of snacks forgotten, Yuzu started dragging Jinta toward the internal hallway with no idea where she was going. Were makeovers really that important to girls?

“We’re leaving soon,” Ichigo called after her, more to assert his authority than anything else. “Don’t be up there all night.” When they were gone, he stroked a hand over his hair. He couldn’t help that it was naturally spiky. And orange. “Hey, Grimmjow. Do I have weird hair?”

“Nah. Las Noches is full of hair like that.”

“Yeah but you’re all arrancar. I’m human—sorta.”

“Sorta?” Grimmjow repeated, discarding another cookie back into the basket, pulling out another to examine like a jeweller with a new diamond. “Are you or aren’t you?”

Ichigo thought about it. “Well, my mother was a quincy, and my dad is a shinigami in a human gigai, and my primary zanpakutou spirit is a hollow. Maybe I’m not really human at all.”

Grimmjow blinked at the basket, but didn’t look like he was really seeing anything much. The look he raised to Ichigo was a little dumbstruck. Unease curled in Ichigo’s stomach with the sudden realisation that maybe Grimmjow hadn’t actually known all of that from Urahara and Yoruichi’s stupid drinking stories. It really made him sound like a freak. Maybe liking Ichigo the human-shinigami was one thing but Ichigo the melting pot of spiritual entities was something else.

“Quincies are human,” Grimmjow said finally, frisbeeing a cookie across to him. It was huge. “I should know, I’ve killed a couple. Does your sister know Jinta would shit knives for her if she asked?”

“Yeah.” The cookie tasted better than anything Ichigo had put in his mouth before. “She’s just mad he’s not making a real move. I guess she got sick of waiting. Or she just really wanted to bake for you.”

“Maybe I should make a move,” Grimmjow muttered, taking a massive bite of a new cookie. “These things are fucking insane. The living world always had these?”

“She can’t even see you!”

“Even better.”

Rolling his eyes, feeling strangely out of sorts at the comment, Ichigo scarfed down the rest of the gifted cookie, sucking crumbs off his thumb. Grimmjow’s nose scrunched slightly at the lack of outrage he showed and pushed his cooling bowl of soup across to the empty side of the table. Ichigo shoved his own over to follow it. There they both sat for a quiet moment, Ichigo feeling pretty comfortable after the day they’d had together so far. So much of that bitter anger and needling had evaporated with just a few words. It made him want to say something daring, something he’d never thought to ask before.

“So how come you don’t have a girlfriend, anyway?” Ichigo blurted out into the silence. “Or, uh, boyfriend? Hollowfriend. I would’ve thought that an arrancar like you would have a line of crushes out the door and halfway down the street. Is it your ass personality?”

Grimmjow glowered at him. “Who says I want any of that shit to begin with?”

“Okay, okay. Forget I said anything.” Sore topic, apparently. “Hey, give me another cookie. That soup was way too salty.”

“No.”

“C’mon!”

“Fuck off. These are mine.”

“You just gave me one!”

“Yeah, and it’s all you’re getting. Greedy asshole.”

“Hypocrite,” Ichigo grumbled in defeat—and lunged across the table at the basket. But he didn’t have sonido and Grimmjow definitely did, even if he was still kind of sick. The reishi in the cookies must have really helped, because he had the basket out of arm’s reach and Ichigo flat on his back on the tatami in the same instant. A hand like a hydraulic press was spread across his chest, pinning him to the floor. Grimmjow’s satisfied smirk when he couldn’t fight against it spoke volumes. “Ow. You know I’m no damn match for you in this body.”

“Sure do. You’re like a walking, talking pillow. All squishy and brittle and shit.”

“Squishy?” Ichigo repeated, glaring up at the sharp-toothed smile turned down toward him. “I swear to god, I’ll get Urahara’s zanpakutou walking stick and transform right here to kick your poisoned ass.” Straining up against the hand on his chest, he felt his sternum give more than the hand did. “Get off me. You made your point.”

The thing was, Grimmjow was way too close for their old angry arguments. This was more like a happy cat playing with its food, and despite being the actual food in this scenario, Ichigo was a little bit pleased to be pinned to the floor if it meant Grimmjow’s sharp blue eyes would keep gleaming at him like that.

“Maybe I like you like this. All soft and floppy. You’re like a gigai someone left on the floor.”

“None of this sounds like a compliment, you asshole,” Ichigo grated, silently taking it all back in an instant. Realising he had a chance with Grimmjow’s weight obnoxiously squashing him down, he stretched his head forward and snapped his teeth shut on the cartilage at the top of one warm ear. Then he bit down as hard as he could. His jaw strength might be minimal but at least he could inconvenience the asshole. Floppy. Really.

“Oi, fucker.” Tugging his head away a little and feeling Ichigo’s teeth refuse to give, Grimmjow laughed.

It was the same laugh from that very first morning as King; some unfiltered mixture of surprised and pleased. Maybe he had a secret soft spot not just for cats, but anything a lot weaker than he was that tried fruitlessly to murder him. Human Ichigo without access to Kon or his shinigami badge included. Letting go when it became more than clear his teeth didn’t have a chance of denting Grimmjow’s hierro, Ichigo frowned up and pushed at his shoulders meaningfully. He was kinda heavy.

“Slobbered all over my ear, you sick fuck,” Grimmjow said, and ducked his head to rub it all over Ichigo’s chest to get the spit off. “Hope you like wearing that.”

“Moron,” Ichigo said, and licked a stripe through his blue hair before he could think twice. Shit, that was cat stuff. King stuff. Grimmjow just growled and popped his head up, touching the damp spot with his fingertips. He looked a little bit baffled. Ichigo felt his face heat, but he didn’t say anything about it. “You gonna get up now?”

Cutting him a wary look, Grimmjow scanned the visible upper half of Ichigo that wasn’t squashed under him. Propped up on his forearms over Ichigo, he looked like he was thinking some really deep thoughts. Unfortunately, he was breathing peanut butter breath all over Ichigo’s face. There was a flicker of something like confusion every time his eyes returned to Ichigo’s face. Something about the expression made his stomach clench up. Was he figuring something out? Was it the stupid lick? Did it remind him of King? That didn’t even make any sense!

“What is it?” Ichigo asked finally, unable to take the silence. “You feeling sick again?”

“You and Yoruichi,” Grimmjow started, his eyes darting to something on the other side of the room. A muscle in his jaw twitched as he reached up and touched his ear again. Surely all the spit had been transferred to his shirt by then. “Been spending plenty of time together, huh.”

Oh, fuck. Grimmjow was onto the transformation after all.

“I can uh, explain,” Ichigo said immediately, trying not to panic. “I swear it’s not what you think. Things just…I don’t know, we were drunk and talking about having kids or not, and I guess I’ve always been interested in her body—”

Ichigo broke off mid-sentence as Grimmjow’s whole face blanked out, the high curve of his cheekbones flushing pink. His mask clacked quietly with the clench of his jaw, but it was the way his eyes darkened and darted away that really got Ichigo. He had a sudden and horrified inkling that they’d really just gotten their wires completely crossed. Then what the hell…?

Footsteps quietly padded down the hall and into the living room, stopping short. Ichigo was on a bad angle to see who it was, but he knew those black bodysuit calves anywhere.

“Kisuke, get the camera!” Yoruichi hooted in delight, her voice vibrant with unrestrained laughter. “I always wanted to be the bread in a pussy sandwich.” Then she launched straight at them.

“No!” Ichigo exchanged one brief look of horror with Grimmjow before the dead weight of Yoruichi’s entire body length slammed down on his back, sandwiching Grimmjow—just like she fucking said—between their bodies. And like the toppling fall of something once thought to be strong and sure, Grimmjow’s propped forearms slipped under the pressure and crushed him.

Sure, his ribs practically bent flat. And yeah, the impact of a nose bumping into Ichigo’s hurt. But it was the mouth shoved down onto his in a crooked, wet seal of parted lips that really stole his attention. Yoruichi had shoved Grimmjow down so hard he’d—they were—oh god. Oh god.

Grimmjow was kissing him.

By accident.

And from the look of the slim brown fingers on the back of his head, Yoruichi wasn’t letting him get up.

“That’s it, boys,” she said proudly, her teeth gleaming white over Grimmjow’s shoulder. “Let it all out.”

Grimmjow’s blue eyes had never looked so wide or shocked as they did in that moment, absolute horror reflected in them as he tried for a push-up and failed. His cheeks had gone from kinda flushed to solid crimson, whether from embarrassment or rage or both. Somewhere, the white flash of a camera lit the room. Ichigo had the sudden instinct that his life was in danger.

“Sorry,” Ichigo muffled into the warmth of Grimmjow’s mouth, tilting his head away to suck in a ragged breath. Then he poked Yoruichi in the fucking eye. “Get the fuck off us, you lead-boned psychopath!”

“I see an opportunity, I seize it,” she replied blithely, rolling backwards across the floor with a palm clapped to her left eye. Even injured she still looked like the cat that got the cream. “Besides, what were you both doing on the floor? Are these for me?” Before Ichigo could protest she’d taken Grimmjow’s basket of get-well cookies. “Kisuke, come on. Tessai’s got three new reels of kidou rope to test.”

“Let me use them first this time,” Urahara said faintly, following her out from the sound of his footsteps. “You always make them all slimy.”

“That’s biology. Grow the fuck up.”

It was the last part of that conversation Ichigo heard, and he hated them both desperately for it. His nose and mouth hurt. On top of him, Grimmjow looked like he’d just mentally checked out of life itself. This time when Ichigo pushed him he flinched away like he’d been burned. His lips were sort of bruised looking, like something had bitten them. Ichigo wondered if he had. He sat up slowly, wincing at the ache around his chest.

“How come your sonido is good for everything but her? I feel like I’ve been tenderised with a meat mallet.”

“How the fuck could I have predicted she’d do that?” Grimmjow cursed, prodding at his mouth. “Bitch has no fucking decency. What was that thing about slimy ropes?”

“Take a guess,” Ichigo groaned, sagging forward like a limp noodle of a human being. “Hey, now that we’re past first base, can you carry me home? I think my internal organs exploded.”

“Real fucking funny,” Grimmjow muttered, covering his face with both hands. “You could have dodged, asshole.”

“And you could have done, uh, anything.” Ichigo licked his teeth, knowing the renewed peanut butter taste was borrowed. “But thanks for not breaking all my teeth, I guess.”

“Yeah, whatever.” The expression on Grimmjow’s face was more in the realm of deep unhappiness than black rage and other vengeful things, which was promising. “Fuck this. I’m going home. Tell Tessai if he sees King around to put him in my room or something. If he loses him I’ll hang him off his own stupid sex ropes.”

Confused by the abrupt exit, Ichigo just watched him walk away back to his bedroom, not bothering to get up off the floor yet. If Grimmjow was asking about King then he didn’t suspect Ichigo after all. If that was true, the weird reaction before must have been something else entirely.

Was Grimmjow interested in Yoruichi? Jeez, if that was the case then that whole stupid prank would have really hurt his feelings. Not to mention Yoruichi basically walking away to do kinky rope shit with Urahara, right in front of his face. Stupid pussy sandwich. Kinda funny though, since the three of them were sort of cat affiliated—oh. That had been the joke. Distantly, Ichigo wondered if maybe he’d been missing the point of a lot of things.

Hearing the high-pitched tear of a dimensional portal opening two rooms over as Grimmjow left in a hurry, Ichigo thought maybe he had.

“Great.” Getting to his feet at last, Ichigo looked toward the hallway as silence swallowed the garganta’s wail. “Yuzu! Hurry up, I’m leaving.”

“Coming!” she yelled from upstairs. “What was all that yelling before?”

“The implosion of real progress. Hurry up.”

“Oh, there, there. Grimmjow-san will come around to you eventually! I think he liked your stomach muscles, at least.”

“Great,” Ichigo grumbled, grabbing the bowls of cold soup to put them in the kitchen. He made it to the sink and dumped them there, staring at the faucet for a moment as Yuzu’s words fully sank in.

Grimmjow had been asking about his relationship with Yoruichi, and freaked out at Ichigo’s less than illuminating answer. But there were other things beginning to slowly add up.

Things like staring at his stomach.

Or not punching his face inside out for getting stuck in a kiss with him.

Liking even his squishy human body, not just the shinigami side he could fight with.

Sharing his food.

“Oh my god,” Ichigo whispered, his entire body surging with directionless adrenaline. “He _likes_  me.” Almost on cue, his phone dinged in his jeans with an incoming message. Fumbling it out of his back pocket, belatedly glad it hadn’t shattered under all the rough treatment, he thumbed open a new text from Urahara.

It was a photo.

Scratch that, it was _the_  photo.

Pinned flat beneath Grimmjow’s weight, eyes wide and staring upward, the photo showed Ichigo being soundly kissed by one very stunned and flushed arrancar. His fingers were digging into the tatami mats. Probably just to try to get leverage, but the photo made it look like…something else. Ichigo hadn’t really realised they were pressed together from thigh to shoulders—and then to mouth. He looked practically debauched, his lips forced open to avoid the clash of teeth.

And then there was Yoruichi, reclined on Grimmjow’s back like a sunbather, flashing the peace sign at the camera with the fiercest grin in the world. She was the actual fucking worst. Fascinated by the photo, Ichigo pinched it open to zoom in on the kiss. His mouth, still a little sore, tingled at the memory.

Huh.

“Okay I’m ready,” Yuzu said right beside him, too-loud and chirpy. Ichigo jumped guiltily and closed the screen. “What was that?” She grabbed the phone off him, but it was locked by then. Clucking her tongue, she swiped across to the PIN screen and tapped in his code. Her eyes bugged. “That’s what Grimmjow-san looks like? Ichi-nii, he’s a real dish.”

Ichigo blinked. “How the hell do you have my phone code? Was it Kon?”

“Please,” Yuzu sniffed. “A mother just knows these things.”

“You need so much therapy.”

“After seeing this, I might.” She passed the phone back and straightened the strap of her dress. “Can I tell Dad you’re kissing hollows now? I always wanted to use the defibrillator on someone.”

“Sure, if I get to tell him you’re touching Jinta’s fuzzy head.” Yuzu winced audibly. Ichigo just raised his eyebrows. “Exactly. C’mon, let’s walk home before the drunk salarymen come out and start trying to throw money at you.”

“That only happened three times!”

Ichigo made it halfway home in something of a daze before all the floating pieces of the day started to settle down. By the time he saw the yellow glow of the front windows beckoning them into the house, he’d sorted out at least a few things he was reasonably sure were true.

Grimmjow still thought King was just his little cat friend.

Grimmjow might think that he and Yoruichi were in a sexual relationship—and by his own stupid babbling, wanted to have children together someday.

Grimmjow liked Ichigo, and maybe _like_ -liked him too. That part he still wasn’t sure about. People blushed over anything, and the whole situation had been totally weird.

Finally, Yoruichi was a meddling demon who needed to be tied up with extremely normal and ordinary rope.

And Ichigo…well, he was already feeling a bit bored and confused without Grimmjow in grabbing distance, let alone the same dimension. Probably taking the other repaired power core back to Las Noches. The idea of that giant compound lit up like home from all its slitted little windows and long halls was sort of nice. He’d like to see it one day, if Grimmjow ever figured out how to look him in the eye again.

Instead, Ichigo thought about the ongoing problem of King. Grimmjow didn’t seem like he was going to let go of the little cat so easily. Maybe instead of just going cold turkey and vanishing, he could organise for King to…say goodbye? Or at least visibly leave Grimmjow behind on purpose. Ichigo could be there to cheer him up, even. No, that wouldn’t work. He was going red just thinking about it.

Fuck it. He could worry about it all later. Pushing Yuzu into the house ahead of him, pulling off his shoes in the foyer, Ichigo tried to put the whole thing out of his head for a while. Too bad the taste in his mouth wasn’t going anywhere.

Not for the first time, Ichigo wondered exactly how and when he’d managed to make such a mess of his hard-won peaceful life.

Cats were nothing but trouble. In every sense of the word.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cat Crack Fever](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16356434) by [junichiblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/junichiblue/pseuds/junichiblue)




End file.
